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.” 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, but that’s about all we know, location-wise.
Sources tell Variety that 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. 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. Variety says that Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan will executive produce, fresh from Westworld getting sent to the Valley Beyond by HBO. Kyle MacLachlan, Xelia Mendes-Jones, and Aaron Moten have also been cast as series regulars. Fallout will come out some time in 2023 or 2024.
This story has been updated throughout.
