Fallout and 9 other video game movies/shows coming in 2024

2023 marked the year when Hollywood studios finally turned a corner on movies and TV shows based on video games. They’ve always been around, but this year they were dominant. HBO’s The Last of Us show was a critical and commercial smash, The Super Mario Bros. Movie made over a billion dollars at the box office…even the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie was a surprise low budget horror hit. Move over, superheroes; video game adaptations are here.

With that kind of heat, you might be wondering what 2024 has in store for video game adaptations. I don’t think there’s anything quite as promising as The Last of Us or the Mario movie, but some of these may well surprise us once they're here.

Here are all the video game movies and TV shows coming out next year:

Halo season 2, Paramount+ (February 8)

First up is the second season of Halo, Paramount+’s adaptation of Microsoft’s long-running sci-fi shooter series. The building blocks of a good Halo game are here. Pablo Schreiber plays the Master Chief, a genetically engineered supersoldier born in the distant future. He flirts with the AI Cortana (Jen Taylor) and faces down the alien Covenant, who want to eradicate the human race. Not if the Master Chief has anything to say about it.

Those are the basics, but since this is a TV show and not a video game, Paramount+ has to fill out the story a bit, adding supporting characters and giving us more information on Master Chief himself; in this series he spends a lot of time without his helmet, something he basically never does in the games. Because of alternations like this, some gamers have accused the show of not staying true to the source material.

Overall, the Halo show is a fun bit of military sci-fi, but it hasn’t produced the buzz of something like The Last of Us. Perhaps that’s because it’s not enough like the games to draw in diehard fans of the franchise but not good enough on its own to attract the general public. Or maybe it’s that the Halo brand isn’t as popular as it once was. This show may have come along a bit too late. Still, Halo will have another chance to prove itself when the second season premieres in February.

Fallout, Amazon Prime Video (April 12)

If any video game adaptation has a chance at breakout success in 2024, it’s Fallout. Based on Bethesda’s popular series of post-apocalyptic role-playing games, Amazon has gone all out to make sure this series is a hit. Just watch the trailer above; clearly they’ve spent a lot of money, not to mention gotten big(ish) name actors like Walton Goggins and Kyle MacLachlan on board.

That said, the main character is Lucy, played by the talented but lesser known Ella Purnell. She has grown up in an underground vault where a select few survivors fled centuries ago to wait out the aftereffects of a brutal war that destroyed civilization. When she emerges onto the surface, she finds a blasted world full of gunslinging mutants, religious zealots in full battle armor, and deadly creatures no one in the vaults have ever encountered.

That sounds serious, and it can be, but the secret to the Fallout games has always been their sense of humor. The games are full of tongue-in-cheek touches, like the fact that pop culture in the future seems to have reverted to what it was like in the 1940s. The trailer shows that the producers are mindful of both sides of this series: they want to make it brutalist, scary and intense; but also goofy, irreverent and fun. The success of the show will depend on getting that balance right.

Speaking of the producers, the Fallout show is being developed by Jonathan Nolan (brother to Christopher) and Lisa Joy, the same husband-wife team that brought us Westworld on HBO. If you loved the first couple of seasons of Westworld, you may think that’s a wonderful thing. If you kept watching and saw the show melt before your eyes, you may be worried. We’ll see which way Fallout goes in April.

Borderlands (August 9, 2024)

Let’s pivot to movies for a minute. One of the biggest video game films coming next year is Borderlands, based on the looter-shooter franchise from Gearbox Software. There are a lot of shooting games out there, but Borderlands takes a page from Fallout and leans into its offbeat sense of humor, which helps it stand out from the pack. Not only is this a game where you run and gun in the distant future, it’s one that laughs at itself while it happens. The unique sense of style makes it a good choice for adaptation.

The Borderlands movie had trouble getting off the ground for years, but producers finally managed to put together an impressive team. This has by far the most eye-popping cast of anything on this list: Cate Blanchett as Lilith, Kevin Hart as Roland, Jack Black as franchise mascot Claptrap, Jamie Lee Curtis as Dr. Patricia Tannis…this movie adaptation of a self-aware first-person shooter has multiple Oscar winners in its cast! Anyone who doesn’t think video game movies should be taken seriously has fallen behind the times.

Shepherding all this is director Eli Roth, who’s best known for gruesome horror fare like Hostel and Thanksgiving. That said, Roth always makes sure to include gags amidst the gore; you need a sense of humor to direct something like Borderlands and Eli Roth has one.

So far as video game adaptations go, the Borderlands movie is the biggest question mark of 2024. It could live up up the pedigree suggested by its cast and crew – I still can’t believe Cate Blanchett is in this – or it could be an embarrassment for all involved. We’ll find out in August.

Arcane season 2, Netflix (November 2024)

Arcane was a surprise hit show on Netflix in 2021, a blistering futuristic drama about a pair of sisters who find themselves on opposite sides of a conflict in a dystopian city where the gulf between the ultra-rich and the destitute peasant class grows ever wider and more combustible. It had heart, it had twists, it had lovely animation, and it quickly earned a season 2 renewal.

The first season of Arcane became the first streaming series to win a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program. It’s won plentiful accolades from critics and audiences alike, distinguishing itself as something of a prestige show. That might sound surprising to people who only know it’s based on League of Legends, a PvP multiplayer game where players try to destroy each other’s home base. League of Legends is one of the most popular esports in the world; the plot probably isn’t what most people think of when they hear the name, but producers Christian Linke and Alex Yee dove into it and produced a great TV show.

Good video game adaptations can come from anywhere these days, so it’s bad practice to count anything out based on the source material. The second season of Arcane will drop on Netflix in November, with Hailee Steinfeld and Ella Purnell returning as sisters Vi and Jinx respectively. You may recall that Purnell is also playing the lead character in the Fallout show. She’s all in on the video game TV show craze, and given the returns, it’s hard to blame her.

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft, Netflix (2024)

As long as we’re talking about animated Netflix series, Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft is coming down the pike at some point next year. This new show will revolve around the titular treasure hunter, who’s been plundering ancient graves since the ‘90s. In this version, Lara will be voiced by Hayley Atwell, who you may know as Peggy Carter from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Tomb Raider has been adapted to film and TV several times already. We’ll see if this latest attempt can break through.