The Big Picture

Collider’s Steve Weintraub talks with
Fallout
series executive producer and director Jonathan Nolan.
In this interview, Nolan discusses why he got involved with
Fallout
, the focus on world-building and creature creation, and the challenges of tackling the video game’s universe.
Nolan also talks about the potential for a
Westworld
4K box set,
Fallout
Season 2, and what he learned while on the set of
The Dark Knight
with brother and director, Christopher Nolan.

Getting anything made for the screen is a huge undertaking. Setting out to build on an established, expansive universe like Fallout, and introduce it in eight episodes? That’s a Herculean feat. It was a task well-suited for screenwriter and director Jonathan Nolan, who’s no stranger to world-building. As a creator of HBO’s Westworld, and the writer behind Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, getting involved with Fallout meant a new opportunity to flex those creative skills.

Based on the Bethesda video game franchise, Prime Video’s Fallout will follow three characters — Lucy the vault dweller (Ella Purnell), Brotherhood of Steel member, Maximus (Aaron Moten), and The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) — into the radiation-soaked Wasteland, where fans new and old will meet bizarre, unique, and horrifying characters and creatures. The show also features the talents of Kyle MacLachlan (Twin Peaks), Michael Emerson (Lost), Moises Arias (Ender’s Game), Leslie Uggams (Deadpool), and more.

In this one-on-one interview, Collider’s Steve Weintraub talks with Nolan about capturing the scope of the games that make Fallout so unique and beloved. Nolan shares his passion for world-building, the lessons he learned on the set of Westworld, creature creation, and how they worked hard to maintain the feeling of gameplay for the series. He also talks about plans for a Westworld 4K box set, his hopes for a Season 2, and his time on the set of The Dark Knight with his brother.

You can watch the full interview in the video above, or you can read the transcript below.

Fallout In a future, post-apocalyptic Los Angeles brought about by nuclear decimation, citizens must live in underground bunkers to protect themselves from radiation, mutants and bandits.Release Date April 11, 2024 Main Genre Sci-Fi Seasons 1 Creator(s) Lisa Joy , Jonathan Nolan Streaming Service(s) Prime Video

Jonathan Nolan Is Making ‘Westworld’ 4K Happen
Image by Federico Napoli

COLLIDER: I’m glad that we can talk about the show now that I’ve seen a few episodes. My one complaint is that I’ve seen the first four and I need Episodes 5 through 8 right now, so please make that happen.

JONATHAN NOLAN: We’ll get right on that. 100%.

Thank you. I need to watch that soon. I’ve got a ton of questions about Fallout, but I want to ask one other question first, which is, do you think I’m ever going to get a 4K box set of Westworld?

NOLAN: Oh, we will make it happen. I’m trying to remember the last configuration. We put a lot of love in those box sets. We’re aware of the fact that it’s a dying art form, and an important one, so there’s a lot of love that went into them. We’ll get you something special.

I like physical media, and I think that’s a show that would be a really cool 4K box set.

NOLAN: 100%. I think we were one of the first shows that did a 4K UHD transfer for Season 1. There’s a lot of love that went into making that show. And I think physical media, you knew as soon as Best Buy pulled it out of their stores that it’s poised for a comeback.

We’re on the exact same page.

Why Jonathan Nolan Wanted To Do ‘Westworld’ and ‘Fallout’
“World-building is the whole game.”

So jumping into Fallout, you’ve directed, I want to say four episodes of TV before Fallout. Could be wrong.

NOLAN: [Laughs] That sounds about right.

So what was it about Fallout that said, “I want to helm three episodes and be in the driver’s seat?”

NOLAN: I think the challenge for this from the beginning — and it was also the fun — was the world-building. The tone of the games is unique, but the scope and ambition of the games was one of the things that led us to want to do this project in the first place. So to be able to try to translate that scope… These are games where you can walk in almost any direction, over any horizon, pick up almost any object and look at it. The scope of the games is breathtaking and ambitious. With all the games, it’s also part of what Todd Howard does in everything that he works on, just these massive, massive environments. So I think it’s a challenge throwing down the gauntlet in terms of saying, “Well, how do we try to capture that?”

For me, as a director, world-building is the whole game. That’s why I wanted to do the pilot for Westworld. I wanted to figure out how we would bring that world to life with a unique visual tone. Here, the challenge was adaptation, where you knew what some of these things would look like, but you had to figure out how on Earth you were gonna make that a reality for the cast, but then also for the audience. And the answer was, in many ways, the same: you pack up your carry-on, and you get on a plane, and you fly somewhere amazing, and you figure it out.

The main complaint for me about streaming shows is that there’s normally a very large gap between seasons. I want to know, what have you guys done, if you’re lucky enough to make a Season 2, to get ready so that if Prime Video says, “Hey, we want another one?” Have you worked on scripts? Do you know what Season 2 is about? How can you make that gap sooner?

NOLAN: No, I find that gap frustrating, as well. Part of it is just the ambition of these shows, right? From shows like Game of Thrones and then Westworld, onwards, that practical photography means it takes time. But I am as frustrated as anyone that it takes this long to get these shows on the air. So, we are poised and hopeful that we’re not gonna have to wait quite that long, should we be so lucky.

What ‘The Dark Knight,’ ‘Westworld,’ & ‘Fallout’ Have in Common (Besides Nolan)
Image via Warner Bros.

One of the things about the first season of a show is you’re building the infrastructure — how long does it take to make an episode? What does it really cost to do these visual effects? All that stuff has to be figured out. So, what did you learn from making the first season that will maybe help you make the second season?

NOLAN: I’ve made this analogy before; it’s not unlike when I was working with my brother, watching him have to build all the elements of that Batman universe, right? The first movie, you have to make the car, the suit, the cave, the house. You have to figure all these things out, and it’s an extra six months of prep, really. Just an extraordinary amount. But you do have a lot of that that you carry with you. And one of the reasons why I wanted us to make The Dark Knight was not only because I’d written the script, and I was pretty excited about it, but because my point to my brother was, “We built this sports car, and you have a chance to get in it and take it for a ride.” So with your second season, you do come to it.

I think the challenges for us with Fallout were the scope of the environments, and figuring out how to make that work. Also, the creature creation; the practical and vis effects-based creature creation, which was not entirely new to us, but more than I had done before. And by the end of the first season, we had figured out an awful lot of the tools that we use to make this universe. So, you do get some economies of scale going into it, but then in any second chapter, you’d want to make it that much more ambitious. So, you have a lot of stuff that you start with, and this was part of it for us with Westworld was wanting to constantly one-up ourselves every season. We were like, “Okay, we built the park. Now, how do we build the outside world?” And the challenges of that, directorially, was so much of the fun of that, and of this. You want to keep topping yourself.

If, in a dream world, you were allowed to make whatever number of seasons of Fallout that you wanna make, are you thinking this is a four-season show, a six-season show, or have you not thought that far ahead?

NOLAN: No, when we talk about it, it’s really more of a question for Graham and Geneva, and how excited they are. I think with television, one of the beauties of it is if the audience comes out for it, if people are excited to see it, there’s an invitation to keep going. But I think one of the lessons that I learned very early on in filmmaking, again, on those Batman movies, was it’s nice if you get a chance to go again, but you’ve got to put everything you can into the season that’s in front of you.

‘Fallout’ Nails the Video Gameplay With Its Ensemble Cast
“First seasons are always a delicious challenge.”

I’m fascinated by the editing process because it’s where it all comes together. How did your episodes possibly change in the editing room in ways you didn’t expect, or was it exactly how you envisioned it?

NOLAN: No, I think editing on anything, especially the first episode of the first season of a new show, you’d be foolish going into it thinking that you had nailed everything on the page. Geneva and Graham are terrific writers, and the scripts were beautiful from the beginning. From the beginning, it was very clear that they had nailed the unique, weird, wild tone of the games. But you understand that there’s a certain amount of pieces moving around, especially with an ensemble. Especially where you’re trying to do justice to the fact that in the games, your character can be good, bad, or somewhere in between, Geneva and Graham quite early in the process landed on this idea of a three-hander.

With Ella, Aaron, and Walton’s characters, you got to lay out that moral spectrum in one go. When you’re doing ensemble and omnibus ensemble storytelling, we learned this the hard way on Westworld, that pilot took months to cut together, and there was an awful lot of the pilot in Westworld where pieces got picked up and moved around and turned into subsequent episodes. Some of the stuff that I was proudest of that we’d shot for the pilot wound up becoming…So, you kind of understood going into it, you gotta be a little loose, you’ve got to be a little open to it.

Ironically, we wound up in a place with this series where the first couple of episodes really took us back to where we started with Geneva and Graham’s early scripts in terms of getting a little bit of a sense for all of these characters. That really was the challenge. You can’t just come to know Ella’s character. You’ve got to get to know Aaron’s character and you’ve got to get to know Walton’s character. So, first season shows are always a delicious challenge, and this one was challenging, but we’re very satisfied with the results.

If you get to make a Season 2, will you be directing three episodes again? Have you not even thought that far?

NOLAN: Haven’t thought that far ahead. Just looking at the show in front of us. What I will say is that working with this cast, this terrifically talented cast and this incredible crew, was an absolute pleasure.

Yeah, you also did a great job with these episodes, which is why I’m asking if you’re going to do more.

NOLAN: Thank you, I appreciate that.

I definitely have to ask you, are you thinking about directing a feature at any point?

NOLAN: Oh, I love movies. I’ve been lucky in my career to work in both. I started in the film business. I’m just having fun. I’m just having a lot of fun right now in the television business, and having fun with what’s right in front of me. But I do love the movies, so we’ll see.

Fallout Season 1 is available to stream on Prime Video.

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