Photo: Prime Video/YouTube
Ella Purnell’s time on Yellowjackets may be over, but she’s ready to set the world on fire in a new series for Amazon. Purnell joins Walton Goggins as the stars of a new show based on the long-running Fallout video-game franchise. Set in a dieselpunk post-nuclear wasteland, the Fallout games explore issues of morality, strategy, and how much Mad Max can inspire a work before you have to give out an associate-producer credit. Bethesda director Todd Howard said on the Lex Fridman podcast that the show won’t directly adapt any of the games, but instead will go off-map. “For this, it was ‘Let’s do something that exists in the world of Fallout.’ It’s not retelling a game’s story. It’s basically an area of the map and like, Let’s tell a story here that fits in the world we built and doesn’t break any of the rules,” he said. “It can reference things in the games, but isn’t a retelling of the games. It exists in the same world, but it’s its own unique thing, so it adds to it.” Variety says that Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan will executive produce, fresh from Westworld getting sent to the Valley Beyond by HBO.
Various Fallout games have taken place in the irradiated ruins of California, West Virginia, Las Vegas, Boston, and Washington, D.C. Prime Video released a tweet showing people in jumpsuits for Vault 33, which has been identified as part of Los Angeles. Within the games, LA is known as the Boneyard. By 2296 (when the series takes place), the Boneyard has been “civilized” under the New Californian Republic’s flag for years. The Fallout series takes place after all the games, whose timelines give Jeremy Bearimy a run for its money (Fallout Shelter is Tuesdays, and also July, and sometimes never).
Per Variety, Purnell will be playing an “upbeat and uncannily direct” woman, with all-American gumption and a dangerous twinkle in her eye. That describes almost every female NPC in the games. Empire reports that Purnell will be a vault-dweller leaving her safe shelter for the first time ever. Aaron Moten will be playing Maximus, a member of the Brotherhood of Steel (like…techno-monks?). According to Deadline, Goggins is playing a ghoul — humans whose flesh has melted off owing to nuclear radiation. But an upside? They’re essentially immortal. All three will be searching for the same MacGuffin. “We talked a lot about The Good, The Bad And The Ugly,” co-creator Graham Wagner told Empire. “That’s three characters in search of a box of gold, so we asked ourselves, ‘What’s the gold in this world?’” Chris Parnell, Michael Emerson, Zach Cherry, Kyle MacLachlan and Xelia Mendes-Jones have also been cast as series regulars. Fallout will come out some time in 2023 or 2024.
Funny you should ask. Fallout comes to Prime Video April 12, 2024.
This story has been updated throughout.