Why the Fallout TV series cast kept the games (and Todd Howard) at arm’s length

Following the mainstream success of HBO’s Last of Us TV series, Amazon is looking to land a hit video game adaptation of its own with Fallout. Releasing next year on Amazon Prime Video, the original series will bring Bethesda’s postapocalyptic vision to life with a star-studded cast that includes Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten, and Walton Goggins. The show isn’t a direct adaptation of any one game, but rather an original story set in the universe that’s looking to capture the series’ darkly satirical tone. Purnell, Moten, and Goggins were on hand at this year’s Game Awards to show off a new clip of the series and crack a joke about Todd Howard, who has led the development of the Fallout series at Bethesda Games. Ahead of the ceremony, the cast sat down for a roundtable interview with press where they spoke about bringing a massive game series to life. While the cast members teased a faithful tonal adaptation, each stressed that they didn’t want to get too close to the source material. That included keeping a little distance from Howard himself. Fallout is an intimidating beast if you’re an actor. It’s a deep RPG series with multiple entries. Even if you had time to play all of its mainline games, there’s an absurd amount of storytelling and worldbuilding to dive into. Rather than trying to cram it all in for research, most of the primary cast opted to watch playthroughs and YouTube lore videos instead. While that may ruffle purists, Moten explains that his decision to keep the source material at a bit of arm’s length was an active choice made so he could have a better focus on his original character. “I have not played Fallout, but I’ve watched Twitch streams,” Moten said in response to a question by Famitsu. “I’ve watched others play it. But it’s partly that I forbid myself from playing it at this point. It’s our job to bring a sense of humanity to these three characters and [not] bring the experience of dying to the same monster nine times and chucking the controller into the wall. It’s just different!” Though the cast may not have spent hundreds of hours digging through sidequests, they had access to plenty of experts who did. The cast notes that the creative team behind the project includes a host of mega-fans who worked closely with Howard to get a better sense of the world. Howard was even on set during some shoots, but Purnell notes that he wasn’t hands-on with the cast outside of a few conversations, which helped give Purnell more freedom to shape her Vault-dwelling character without having to stick to established lore. “[Howard] was on set a lot, but I barely saw him because we were like passing ships in the night,” Purnell tells Digital Trends. “I wanted to do a lot of research on Fallout the game and the tone and the world, but this is a unique character. When I want to get into the psychology behind what happens when you’ve lived underground your entire life and then you come out to the surface, it’s a different kind of mind. I guess I wanted to come up with that on my own a little bit.” Some people have said ‘Is it Fallout 5?’ That’s way above my pay grade! Throughout the conversation, the cast members emphasize that the show is an original take on Fallout rather than an adaptation of any specific game. It plays in the same postapocalyptic sandbox, but tells an entirely new story about Purnell’s character emerging from a vault she’s lived in her whole life and seeing the real world for the first time. Goggins, who plays the noseless Ghoul in the series, explains why that premise feels so ripe for a compelling TV saga. “This isn’t Fallout 1, 2, or 3. It is its own thing. It’s original content in the Fallout world. And some people have said ‘Is it Fallout 5?’ That’s way above my pay grade!” Goggins says in response to a question from Game Informer. “You follow good storytelling no matter where it is, and games that are being adapted into movies and TV shows right now are that way for a reason. That’s where the great stories are. And Fallout is a great story. And built into that story is the possibility of the future. That’s how it starts, man. It’s in the 1950s and that’s Pax Americana and all the rest of it. And then — excuse my language — the fucking world ends as we know it!” “It’s an interesting thing; even the things we’ve gone through as a global community with COVID, and how things drastically changed for all of us, but our own human, subversive sides are still there,” adds Moten when discussing Fallout’s increased relevance in 2023. “And we’ve found a way to continue to connect with each other. Something that’s akin to Fallout is factions. That’s humanity trying to restart itself.” Even with an original approach to story, the cast assures fans that the adaptation is a faithful one. Purnell teases an especially eclectic tone that matches the games, explaining how she was able to use a wide, established world of lore to create mood boards while preparing her character. “Nothing is too ridiculous!” she tells Digital Trends. The cast is in agreement there. When asked by Game Informer what makes Fallout stand out next to other apocalyptic media, like The Last of Us, Goggins underlines the show’s comedic tone. If it wasn’t already apparent that the show is aiming to match that from its first trailer (which jokes that the show comes from the studio behind The Boys and free two-day shipping), Goggins assures fans that the playful heart of the Fallout games is very much the beating heart of the show. “For me, it’s the comedy. It’s the satire, isn’t it? The subversive humor,” Goggins says. “It’s as visually funny as the things that come out of our mouths and we had to get that right or else it wouldn’t be Fallout.” Fallout premieres on April 12, 2024, on Amazon Prime Video.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2’s penultimate installment follows Adar (Sam Hazeldine) and Elrond (Robert Aramayo) as they and their respective Elven and Orc armies meet in battle outside the walls of the Elvish kingdom of Eregion. The conflict itself, known canonically as the Siege of Eregion, takes up the majority of the episode’s runtime, and for good reason. It already ranks high as one of the most impressive blockbuster battle sequences that has ever been brought to life on TV. The siege takes place almost entirely at night, but you’re still able to perceive and understand everything that happens throughout it. That’s a testament to the work of director Charlotte Brändström and cinematographer Alex Disenhof, the latter of whom confessed in an interview with Collider that he was worried about how visually legible the battle would turn out. “As [a] cinematographer, I think, some of the scariest things you can read on a page are like, ‘A moonlit night,'” Disenhof admitted.
Batman: Caped Crusader has finally premiered on Amazon Prime Video since its reveal three years ago and a turbulent transition from Max, evoking the spirit of the much-beloved 1990s show Batman: The Animated Series. It’s a daunting standard for this new series to match, especially since Batman: The Animated Series is a gold standard for many audiences, including the late Kevin Conroy who voiced the Dark Knight.  BTAS co-creator Bruce Timm helms this latest animated effort as the showrunner and an executive producer, with Hamish Linklater (Legion, Midnight Mass) lending his talents as the titular hero to take on this arduous task. It remixes ideas from its spiritual predecessor and the character’s comic book source material to stand apart. While comparisons between the two shows are inevitable, how does Batman: Caped Crusader measure up to the revered 1990s series?
Standing on the shoulders of an animated giant
Nicolas Cage is one of the most recognizable movie stars of the last 40 years. However, the Oscar winner is taking his talents to the small screen for Amazon’s Noir, a live-action series based on the Marvel comic Spider-Man Noir. Per Amazon, Cage will star as the titular Spider-Man Noir, “an aging and down-on-his-luck private investigator (Cage) in 1930s New York, who is forced to grapple with his past life as the city’s one and only superhero.” Cage famously voiced Peter Parker/Spider-Man Noir in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Noir will be the first time the character has been portrayed in a live-action adaptation.