The Fallout video game series has become one of the best and most involved series that Bethesda has ever made. From Interplay’s original 1997 Fallout game to the online multiplayer game Fallout 76, we have seen numerous characters who vary in their humanity. Getting to see things like power armor, ghouls, super mutants, and all the admittedly wacky weapons is something that Fallout fans can only dream of, but that will be coming to a live-action TV series very soon.

Editor's Note: This article was updated on April 10, 2024.

When and Where Will 'Fallout' Premiere?

Fallout is set to premiere on Prime Video on April 10, 2024, at 6:00 p.m. PST. Prime Video has revealed that all eight episodes will be released at once, as opposed to the weekly rollout they've given to some of their other popular series, such as The Boys, Reacher, and Invincible.

Is There a Trailer for 'Fallout'?

Prime Video unveiled the first teaser trailer for Fallout during a presentation at the 2023 edition of CCXP. Appropriately set to Nat King Cole's "I Don't Want To See Tomorrow," the first full look at the series promises fans of the franchise a live-action adaptation that will stay loyal to the video games while also expanding the world even more.

Prime Video released the first full trailer for Fallout online on March 7, 2024.

Who Will Star in 'Fallout'?

Ella Purnell (Yellowjackets) is set to star as the lead heroine, Lucy, a Vault Dweller from Vault 33, who is described as an "upbeat and uncannily direct woman, with all-American gumption and a dangerous twinkle in her eye." Purnell teased her character's arc in the series during a panel at CCXP:

"Her survivor identity, I think, is created by her willingness and her ability to adapt when she gets to the surface. The show and the game are all about choices, it's all about, 'That's how you evolve,' and I think Lucy is faced with so many of those so early on, of like, is she gonna stay in the vault or is she gonna leave the vault? That's the first big choice. I think her being a survivor is actually something that is formed throughout the season rather than maybe what the audience sees when they first see her."

Walton Goggins (Justified) will play a bounty hunter known as The Ghoul, who has been living in the apocalyptic wastelands of Santa Monica for 200 years after the nuclear war that changed everything. Goggin's revealed some key details about his character while at CCXP:

"He is ruthless. He is not without morals; he has his own kind of moral code. He is pragmatic, he is devilishly handsome with a wicked sense of humor, but he has seen the lesser side of humanity. In some ways, he's the great observer in this world and takes the audience through this journey. He's cynical, deeply cynical about everything that he's seen, but he wasn't always that way, right? I mean, The Ghoul has a name and his name was Cooper Howard. I can't really tell you too much about him, but the chasm between the two is vast. You'll see it kind of retro-engineered, really, like why his worldview is his worldview. Is he a savior? Is he not a savior?"

Aaron Moten (Emancipation) will play the series' third lead, Maximus, a member of the Brotherhood of Steel. Moten revealed his character's dynamic with the military unit that fans of the game will be very familiar with:

"I think Maximus, as well, has involved himself in a unit, it's a military unit, the Brotherhood of Steel, but I think he just gravitated towards feeling more powerful amongst the group as opposed to on his own. I think it's a real challenge for him as a character to feel like he is all that he should be when it is just him on his own. But I think that vault life has to be somewhat similar to that in that you are a unit continuing to keep a vault running, as well as training for the ultimate mission to come up to the surface and save the world.​​​​​​"

Kyle MacLachlan (Twin Peaks) will play the role of Hank, Lucy's father and the Vault Overseer of Vault 33.

Filling out the ensemble are Chris Parnell (Rick and Morty), Dale Dickey (Hell or High Water), ( Moisés Arias (The King of Staten Island), Johnny Pemberton (21 Jump Street), Sarita Choudhury (And Just Like That), Michael Emerson (Lost), Leslie Uggams (Deadpool), Frances Turner (The Boys), Dave Register (Heightened), Zach Cherry (Severance), Rodrigo Luzzi (Dead Ringers), Annabel O'Hagan (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit), and Xelia Mendes-Jones (The Wheel of Time).

Who Is Making 'Fallout'?

Westworld creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy are executive producing the series for Prime Video through their production company Kilter Films. Nolan will also be directing the first three episodes of the series. Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Captain Marvel) and Graham Wagner (Portlandia) serve as the co-showrunners as well as executive producers and writers on the series. Executive producers also include Athena Wickham of Kilter Films and Bethesda's Todd Howard and James Altman.

While presenting the first look at the series at CCXP, Nolan praised his experiences working with Bethesda and Howard, saying:

"I had the good fortune of having played. In my life before, when I didn't work in television and when I didn't have children, I played games pretty often, and Fallout 3 is a game that I had played. And there's no completion of that game, but I played it for hours and hours and hours, and had been very taken with the tone of it and the world of it. So when we sat down, it was sort of this love connection of, 'I've always wanted to meet you,' and vice versa.

From the beginning, it seemed very clear that Todd had... In truth, my favorite collaborators to adapt from are dead people because they don't argue. Todd is very much alive, but had that great, great confidence of someone who has created a world, [and] allowed in some cases – New Vegas is an example – other people to sort of create within that world. So he had both the confidence and the experience of knowing that if you build a good enough world, people can create within it and connect to the stories that you've told."

What Will ‘Fallout' Be About?

The official synopsis for the Fallout series, from Prime Video, reads:

Based on one of the greatest video game series of all time, Fallout is the story of haves and have-nots in a world in which there’s almost nothing left to have. 200 years after the apocalypse, the gentle denizens of luxury fallout shelters are forced to return to the irradiated hellscape their ancestors left behind — and are shocked to discover an incredibly complex, gleefully weird and highly violent universe waiting for them.

Given that this is a world full of immortal ghouls, laster muskets, and a whole range of otherworldly nuclear-powered contraptions these descriptions sound right on. Fallout world is often a mix of hilarious capitalist propaganda, with the main protagonist escaping from Vaults decades or centuries after the nuclear apocalypse happens. Sprinkle in a bit of B-grade horror elements, and you have the crazy set of scenarios that enable Fallout.

Lisa Joy teased the tone of Fallout in an interview with Collider:

“just a gonzo, crazy, funny, adventure, and mindfuck like none you’ve ever seen before. It’s pretty cool.”

Jonathan Nolan, revealed at CCXP 2023, that the creative team behind the series had always wanted to tell a new story within the Fallout universe, instead of being a direct adaption of one of the games, saying:

"So, we knew from the beginning that we wanted to tell an original story within the Fallout universe. And because of the way the games work, where each game is a different city with a different set of characters, with a different set of deeper questions it wants to ask and different ways of playing with time, and all the delicious speculative fiction, the bits and pieces that go into each of these stories, that if we did it right, we'd fit right in. And I think that's where we've landed. It feels like another entry in the series, in hopefully the best way."

When looking into the Fallout series, there may have been some expectation that the TV series would follow one of the game plot lines. Others may have been worried that the TV series would break the canonical rules of the Fallout universe but Bethesda director Todd Howard put an end to those worries by speaking on the Lex Friedman Podcast:

“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 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. 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.”

When and Where Did 'Fallout' Film?

Production for the Fallout series began in June 2022, and filming took place in New Jersey, New York, and Utah. Back in June 2022, Collider revealed several key behind-the-scenes images of the set in Staten Island, involving the Super Duper Mart, a name that should be very familiar to longtime fans of the video games. In July 2022, Walton Goggins posted on Instagram that filming for the series had officially begun.

Will There Be a 'Fallout' Season 2?

Nothing has been confirmed about a second season, but it does certainly seem possible. While talking to Collider at the 2023 CCXP, Graham Wagner revealed that the team already has some ideas for what they're going to do for future seasons, saying:

I don't know how to talk about it, but I just want to assure you that we definitely do. I feel like we barely scratched the surface of what we even wanted to do in Season 1, so there's so much more to do. I think a lot about the craziness of Fallout, and if we were just to confront everybody with it all at once, it would just be like tuning into Season 7 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, like, “There's a demon on the couch and he's just talking about a breakup. What is going on?” You know? It's too much. So, we really are taking our time with this, and we really are stepping it up. Though, I think, at the same time, a whole lot of shit happens in the very first two episodes. So, it's both crazy from a narrative perspective, but from a Fallout perspective we're taking it very slow and we're being patient because we have so much more to do.