I don’t want to set the world on fire. I just want to start a flame in your heart by telling you that Yellowjackets star Ella Purnell is joining Amazon Prime Video‘s Fallout series cast. The series hails from Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s Kilter Films, with Nolan, set to direct the premiere.
“Fallout is one of the greatest game series of all time,” said Nolan and Joy last year. “Each chapter of this insanely imaginative story has cost us countless hours we could have spent with family and friends. So we’re incredibly excited to partner with Todd Howard and the rest of the brilliant lunatics at Bethesda to bring this massive, subversive, and darkly funny universe to life with Amazon Studios. “
Fallout is a post-apocalyptic role-playing videogame series heavily influenced by 1950s post-war culture. Much of the franchise takes place hundreds of years after a great war over resources decimated the planet. The U.S. government set up a series of self-sufficient fallout shelters known as Vaults, but there wasn’t enough room for everyone, and those who survived the nuclear fallout became mutated.
Purnell’s role has not been revealed, but it’s believed that she’ll be playing the lead, referred to as Jean, a young woman with a can-do attitude who may be hiding a dangerous secret.
Based on the mega-popular video game franchise from Bethesda Game Studios and Bethesda Softworks, Fallout is executive produced by Nolan, Joy, and Athena Wickham for Kilter Films; Todd Howard for Bethesda Game Studios’ and James Altman for Bethesda Softworks. Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner will showrun.
The Fallout video game franchise includes several titles, with Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas being among the most beloved titles in the series. The games challenge players to navigate an irradiated landscape overrun with survivors, mutants, and villains hoping to seize control of certain territories.
Previously, Walton Goggins joined the Fallout cast as a Ghoul. In Fallout, Ghouls are humans whose bodies have been ravaged by prolonged exposure to radiation. As victims of the Great War, ghouls are known to wander the wasteland while causing trouble for survivors of the destruction.
It will be interesting to see what kind of liberties Amazon’s Fallout series takes with the source material. I have a sneaking suspicion that some things will appear different from what players of the game series are used to seeing. That’s okay, though. Recreating video games for live-action doesn’t always go well, so it could be in the project’s best interest to deviate from the existing material.