Prime Video's New Fallout TV Series Is Canon With The Video Games
The upcoming "Fallout" television series is heading to Prime Video next year, and while the show is based on the popular video game franchise, it's not a retelling of anything we've seen before in this retro-futuristic, post-apocalyptic world.
Bethesda Game Studios, the company that developed "Fallout," preferred that approach. And Todd Howard, an executive producer at Bethesda who also directed "Fallout 3" and "Fallout 4," recently shared in an interview with Vanity Fair that it was a pitch along these lines that secured Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy taking on the project.
"I did not want to do an interpretation of an existing story we did," Howard said. "That was the other thing — a lot of pitches were, you know, 'This is the movie of 'Fallout 3' ...' I was like, 'Yeah, we told that story.' I don't have a lot of interest seeing those translated. I was interested in someone telling a unique 'Fallout' story. Treat it like a game. It gives the creators of the series their own playground to play in."
Joy and Nolan appeared to take that mentality to heart and created a completely new story set in the "Fallout" universe. That doesn't mean, however, that what takes place on the television show doesn't fit into the other lore of the franchise.
An addition to the canon
Todd Howard also shared with Vanity Fair that he and Bethesda view everything that happens in the upcoming series as part of the "Fallout" canon. "That's what's great, when someone else looks at your work and then translates it in some fashion," he said.
What this means in practice is that nothing in the upcoming television show conflicts with any established plot lines or world-building that's been crafted in the games. It also means that the show adds to what we know about the world of "Fallout," and Howard was quick to point out that he's a fan of what Nolan and Joy have brought to the franchise. "I sort of looked at [their additions and interpretations] like, 'Ah, why didn't we do that?'" he said.
And while plot details are slowly being revealed, we do know that this video game TV adaptation has something in common with "The Last of Us" television series, which is also an adaptation of a video game set in a post-apocalyptic world. The two shows, like their source material, use the lens of a bleak future to emphasize the disparities and injustices that we face today.
Happy stuff!
You can see the in-canon tale told in the "Fallout" series play out when the show premieres on Prime Video on April 12, 2024.