The “Fallout” series is produced by Jonathan Nolan and his wife, Lisa Joy, the duo behind the “Westworld” series.
Amazon Prime Video
“A vast mine of stories”, video games will “probably become Hollywood’s first Source of inspiration”, believes Jonathan Nolan, brother of filmmaker Christopher and British-American producer of the “Fallout” series, adaptation of a saga well known to gamers of which he is a part.
Expected Thursday April 11 on Prime Video, the series takes place 200 years after a nuclear war and follows the privileged inhabitants of fallout shelters, forced to return to the irradiated surface, where violence, anarchy and mutated creatures reign.
It is produced by Jonathan Nolan – who also directed the first three episodes – and his wife Lisa Joy, the duo behind the “Westworld” series.
Its launch comes a little over a year after “The Last of Us”, another series based on a post-apocalyptic game. The public and critical success of the latter has in the meantime proven that the transition from console to live-action fiction could work.
“Growing up with video games”
“It helped us enormously that this series came out first, that it was so brilliant and so well received, because it takes a lot of pressure off,” assured Jonathan Nolan, a good sport, to a handful of journalists at the Canneseries festival in Cannes, where “Fallout” was screened out of competition.
Adaptations of games into film and series are not new, but their quality often left something to be desired, from the 1993 film “Super Mario Bros” to the “Resident Evil” series released on Netflix in 2022.
The situation seems to have changed thanks to creators who “grew up with video games” like Jonathan Nolan, who played “Pong”, a minimalist ping-pong simulator, released in 1972, with his brother, and s 16 years ago, he was amazed by “Fallout 3”, an immersive role-playing game.
“It’s like being born at the end of the 19th century and witnessing the birth of cinema,” says the 47-year-old producer.
“I realized at that time that the storytelling of video games had become, in many ways, more ambitious, more avant-garde and more punk rock than cinema or television,” says Jonathan Nolan, who would clearly see the universe of “Half Life”, “Bioshock” or “Portal”, filled with “breathtaking moments”, adapted into series.
“Not a type”
“We will hear a lot about the video game genre in the coming years (in cinema or television), but video games are not a genre (…) it is a medium for telling stories, and even (…) the biggest medium given the number of people who play it and the size of the industry,” judges Jonathan Nolan.
Video games could thus dominate, in the years to come, Hollywood production, which is fond of easily identifiable brands.
Especially “as we begin to feel a decline in (superhero) films adapted from comics,” believes the man who revisited Batman with his brother by co-writing “The Dark Knight” and “The Dark Knight Rises.”
Unlike the series “The Last of Us”, modeled on the eponymous game, “Fallout” creates new characters and a new plot, drawing inspiration above all from the “tone” of its model, which mixes “drama, emotion, dark humor, satire, politics.
The game’s creator, Todd Howard, and “his team participated in every step” of the adaptation, argues Jonathan Nolan, who did not seek to satisfy fans of the franchise.
Natural decors
Another guarantee of success was the support of Amazon, which enabled filming in natural settings in Utah or in Namibia, on the Skeleton Coast. “When we adapt a video game, which only relies on computer-generated visuals, very beautiful visuals at that, we add nothing to the franchise by giving the public even more virtual images,” explains Jonathan Nolan .
But this immersion comes at a cost. And “Fallout” will have to “work with the public” to see other seasons, concedes the creator, “realistic” and frustrated at not having been able to finish his “Westworld” series, abruptly canceled after four seasons.
(afp)
