‘You’re asking them to surrender that’: Fallout’s Jonathan Nolan wasn’t sure if fans would like the Prime Video show’s biggest changes

• April 10, 2024

Jonathan Nolan has opened up on the “intimidating but exciting” challenge of bringing Bethesda’s beloved Fallout games to life in another medium.

The Westworld, Person of Interest, and Batman movie writer, who led development on Amazon‘s live-action addition to the Fallout franchise, is a self-confessed fan of the post-apocalyptic action-role playing games. While that stood him in good stead for creating the Prime Video series, though, Nolan exclusively told TechRadar that it was nonetheless daunting to try and deliver an adaptation that long-time fans would be happy with.

Asked how he went about ensuring that Prime Video’s Fallout TV show was accessible to newcomers as it was respectful to Bethesda’s source material, Nolan told me: “That was one of the most intimidating but exciting challenges in bringing these brilliant games to life. For me, it was really about approaching the series as a huge fan of the games and trying to hold onto what was essential.

“Most of the time with adaptations, you’re adding things. So, with a novel, you’re adding images that make things more vivid and real. With video game adaptations, you’re doing the opposite. You’re taking a degree of interactivity and control that the player has, and you’re asking them to surrender that, so you immediately some of that essentiality.”

Honoring – and poking fun at – Bethesda’s source material

However, despite the inevitable worry that the change in medium brought, Nolan was confident that the writing team he assembled – including co-showrunner Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet – would do justice to Fallout‘s storied history. 

Not only that, Nolan was also optimistic that the TV adaptation’s infinite number of tributes to Bethesda’s iconic games, which includes a whole host of Easter eggs and other in-universe references, would delight Fallout diehards. That, Nolan believes, would ensure that there would be little to no backlash from fans about the necessary creative tweaks – and even gentle ribbing of the franchise itself – when Fallout debuts on Prime Video, aka one of the best streaming services.

“I’ve always been drawn to games that [Bethesda boss] Todd [Howard] makes,” Nolan added. “There are so many choices you can make in those games and that ironically speaks to the creative challenges of bringing this show to life.

“We could have had our Vault dweller Lucy [played by Ella Purnell] as the sole protagonist, but Graham and Geneva settled on an ensemble of Lucy, Maximus [Aaron Moten], and The Ghoul [Walton Goggins] that speaks to the one of the game series’ hallmarks where your character can be good, bad, or somewhere in-between, and where they can join one faction or another. That gives you people with varying moralities and allows them to collide together to great effect.

“There’s also a great joke-filled moment in episode three where The Ghoul complains about constantly getting sidetracked, which is one of our many, many nods to the delicious fun of these games, which have this movie-like quality to them alongside all of their playable pieces. So, we hope fans appreciate all of those homages and respect the slight changes we made to make this a more cinematic experience.”

Amazon’s Fallout series will launch on Prime Video today (April 10) in the US, and April 11 in the UK and Australia. Read my Fallout TV show opinion piece to see what I thought of its first four episodes, before reading more from my exclusive chats with Nolan, Howard, and the show’s cast below.

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Jonathan Nolan has opened up on the “intimidating but exciting” challenge of bringing Bethesda’s beloved Fallout games to life in another medium. The Westworld, Person of Interest, and Batman movie writer, who led development on Amazon‘s live-action addition to the Fallout franchise, is a self-confessed fan of the post-apocalyptic action-role…