6 takeaways from the Fallout TV show trailer launch

Prime Video just dropped a new trailer for Fallout, a zany post-apocalyptic series based on the video games by Bethesda Softworks and Interplay Entertainment. The Fallout games have been going strong since 1997, with each installment telling a totally new tale set in a different part of the Wasteland. The television show will continue in that vein, featuring a new cast of characters yet nonetheless treating the long-running game franchise as part of its canon.

This new trailer gives us our best look yet at the series. Combined with some juicy new tidbits shared by the cast and crew at a virtual trailer launch event attended by Winter Is Coming, we now have a bunch of new details about the series that we didn't know before. Watch the trailer below, and then read on for five of our biggest takeaways.

1. Bethesda reached out to Jonathan Nolan to adapt Fallout for television

It was first announced that Westworld showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy were adapting Fallout in 2020, and we'll only now be watching it in 2024...but this Fallout adaptation has actually been in the works for much longer.

It all begins with Fallout 3 in 2008, the first title in the series produced by Bethesda Softworks after they bought the rights to the series from Interplay Entertainment. That game was an enormous hit that reinvigorated interest in the franchise, which had mostly lain dormant since 1998's Fallout 2. As Bethesda Softworks executive director Todd Howard explained during the trailer launch, it wasn't long after that that Hollywood came calling.

"People would approach us over, you know, I would say a 10-year period after Fallout 3 came out, you know, from 2009 on, to adapt Fallout to film or television. And we took a very cautious approach," Howard said. "Jonah was somebody I was such a fan of the movies he did and the TV he was doing, and I actually, you know, had someone reach out."

After Bethesda got in touch, Nolan and Howard went out to lunch, where they discussed how to adapt Fallout for the screen. According to Nolan, this was "about five years ago," so circa 2019. "It was a bit of a fanning-out moment for me," Nolan recalled, saying that he and Howard "just [started] talking about the possibilities of how you could take this incredible universe."

"When I first talked to Jonah, I mean, honestly, it was like someone I had known for a long time, you know, [he] obviously played the games a ton, and his approach, right from the get-go, was in sync with what I was thinking," Howard said.

That lunch resulted in a "handshake deal" that Nolan and Bethesda would adapt Fallout, though it would be some time yet before everything was put down in writing. I doubt I'm the only longtime Fallout fan heaving a sigh of relief after hearing how Nolan and Howard hit it off so immediately because of their shared vision for the series. Like so many other gamers, Nolan got hooked on the series with Fallout 3, which he said "devoured about a year of my life."

"You know, I was an aspiring writer at that point. It almost derailed my entire career. It's so ludicrously playable and fun. No, I mean, seriously, the games were just incredible."

According to Howard, Nolan and his team have built an adaptation that is "authentic" to the world of Fallout. "For someone like me and the team here at Bethesda, it's just a real blessing to see what they've done with it."

If I wasn't already excited to see Fallout, I'm certainly even more so now.