The Big Picture

Collider’s Steve Weintraub talks with
Fallout
co-writer and showrunner Graham Wagner about the Prime Video series.
Wagner discusses Season 2 and what he hopes to revisit, the Vault 33 bible, filming on location, and shrinking the gap between seasons.
The showrunner also talks about working with Bethesda on storylines and what the video game company approved and didn’t.

Self-proclaimed fan of the original video games, co-writer and showrunner Graham Wagner (Portlandia) ventured into the Wasteland for Prime Video’s Fallout adaptation series with writing partner Geneva Roberston-Dworet (Captain Marvel) during the pandemic. After partnering with Westworld creator Jonathan Nolan, the show is finally releasing to Prime Video, with all eight episodes dropping on April 11 for easy binging. However, it’s no secret that streaming is a tricky beast, so in order to free that potential Season 2 from a vault, Wagner and the creative team behind the show had to be strategic.

Gone are the days of regularly scheduled programming. Now, it typically comes down to the choice between weekly episode releases in the hopes of luring in viewers or offering up a full season to binge-watch. During this interview with Collider’s Steve Weintraub, Wagner discusses the pros and cons of both methods in a new television frontier, how much of the post-apocalyptic story they had fleshed out, how he hopes to “shrink the gap” should they get a Season 2, and how Bethesda had a hand in the series, creatively.

Adapted from the video game franchise, Fallout stars Ella Purnell (Yellowjackets) as Lucy the Vault Dweller, Aaron Moten (Disjointed) as Maximus in the Brotherhood of Steel, and Walton Goggins (Justified) as The Ghoul. The trio offer different perspectives, similar to the gameplay, across what’s left of an irradiated United States full of fearsome creatures, bizarre weapons, and unique characters.

Check out 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) Geneva Robertson-Dworet Streaming Service(s) Prime Video

COLLIDER: I really want to say congrats. I’ve seen the first four and my only complaint is I don’t have Episodes 5 through 8.

GRAHAM WAGNER: Oh, that’s a great complaint to have. Hopefully that isn’t the audience’s complaint. That would mean something has gone terribly wrong with the streaming platform.

The Highs and Lows of Bingeable Streaming
“No writers’ room can compete with Reddit.”
Image via Prime Video

I’m actually curious about that. Some shows get released weekly and some are bingeable. How did you guys decide to release it all at once? Was this a Prime Video decision? Did you ever debate doing it weekly?

WAGNER: Oh, yeah, we debated every version of it. We were on either side of it at various points of the conversation, because I think we’re all kind of trying to decide how to do this in that new normal. Part of it, for us, was we’re missing our must-see TV night. I was working on Silicon Valley back when Jonah was doing Westworld, and Sunday night was a great night to come out. Even if you didn’t like one of the shows, you might watch one of the shows because there were four shows sort of latched together in a really sort of ritualized fashion. I don’t know what night we would have chosen if it was to be weekly. I know Disney is doing Wednesday at midnight. I don’t know if that’s, as a viewer, working for me. It’s not appointment viewing to stay up until midnight and watch, you know, Ashoka, or whatever have you, and I want to watch those shows. But yeah, until one of the streamers takes a night and claims it, I think that the binge model is gonna persist. And what do I know? [Laughs]

You bring up a good point. Listen, it could go either way, and I think some fans love the binge model, but then when certain shows are released weekly…

WAGNER: It can help the show because there’s the discourse, of course. That’s what we’re after. But sometimes with a show like this, the discourse can backfire and you see your ending coming. I think someone a long time ago said, “No writers’ room can compete with Reddit.” It’s like 10,000 geniuses working 24/7. They’re gonna get ahead of you. So I think in the eight-episode model, binging works quite well.

‘Fallout’ Showrunner Hopes to “Shrink the Gap” Between Seasons

One of my complaints about streaming shows is that there’s often a very long break between seasons. This is a very big show to make, so my question is, after Season 1 finished, did you guys continue doing any sort of writers’ room or arc out future things so that if Prime Video says, “Hey, this is a big hit, we want more episodes,” you can jump in and get started?

WAGNER: Some real under the hood stuff, Geneva and I are overall deals. We wrapped Season 1 and we started working on Season 2 in the hopes of there being interest in that from Amazon, and in the hopes of shrinking that gap. Because leaving people on a cliffhanger for two years is a bizarre impulse. As a viewer, I could barely handle the TNG season finale cliffhangers. Those drove me crazy. But they were some of my best memories in television. So, yeah, we’re definitely trying to shrink that gap. 100%.

Do you guys have any sort of scripts or is it more like, “This is what we would do with Season 2, this is our arc, and we just have to write the episodes?”

WAGNER: We’re at a point where we just have to hire writers, write the episodes, shoot the episodes. So, we’re ready to go, but there’s a lot of decisions. It is a big show, and it is a big investment. I think Amazon wants to be absolutely sure they want to make a second season before they pay for it all because it’s an undertaking.

Related ‘Fallout’ Showrunner Says They’ve “Barely Scratched the Surface” With Season 1 Showrunner Graham Wagner says the team is taking it slow and steady bringing ‘Fallout’s craziness to television.

I’m gonna go out on a ledge and say you’re getting a second season. The show is too good and the fans are gonna be happy. No doubt.

WAGNER: Well, I hope you’re right. Have you been right about this stuff in the past?

I would say 75, 80%.

WAGNER: I’m glad you’re not wearing a Firefly T-shirt right now.

[Laughs] But every once in a while, like, Netflix has had a show where they clearly have the numbers, but they choose not to make another season. So, that’s how I can be wrong.

WAGNER: Yeah. I think we’re all in a moment of questioning how much we understand the business of the business. Anything could happen, of course.

Mapping Out Vault 33 and Beyond
Image via Prime Video

How much did you figure out the bible of Vault 33 and the surrounding vaults in terms of the history and laying out everything in case you need to go back? And how much is it sort of like, “We’ll figure it out later when we need it?”

WAGNER: Well, with such a short season you figure everything out kind of early because you don’t have that much space. I think if we were to do a 24-episode version of this show — which would be so fun, by the way, but also I think our fatality rate would be high — in the 24-episode model, you have to engage in a fair bit more improvising by necessity because you just cannot figure out that level of detail for that long. But with eight episodes, it’s more about fitting in what you have figured out, and is there space, and it feeling like you’re just jamming the suitcase a little bit with all of the ideas you had before you even started writing. So, we have ideas from Season 1 that didn’t make it into Season 1 and that we hope to get in there in Season 2 just based on running time alone.

It’s eight episodes. How much was that a Prime Video decision, and how much was that your decision?

WAGNER: I think it was a suggestion. And by the end of it I was grateful for it because a first season, I don’t know, I’ve likened this to giving birth to a monster truck. It’s a lot at once. We wrote the show [and] we had a room hired without a pilot to look at. First seasons are just tough by nature. You’re kind of wandering in the dark a little bit, collectively. So, yeah, I think eight episodes was a merciful amount considering the scope of this show.

How the WGA Strike Can Improve ‘Fallout’ Season 2
Custom Image by Jefferson Chacon

One of the things about the first season is you’re learning the infrastructure of a show, how you can make it, and where you spend the money. There’s so much you figure out that you can then apply to a second season. What were some of the big lessons you learned when you were actually making it that you will be able to apply if you are lucky enough to get a second season?

WAGNER: I’m trying not to spoil things. We were in a spot where we were writing scripts and shooting at the same time. And that was all part of, like, “We’ve got a one-episode order. Let’s turn it into an eight-episode order in success.” I hope that we can do what we’ve done in cable and streaming for a while now, which is fully write the show and then be done and produce the show. Thanks to the new WGA rules, we’ll be able to have writers on set learning the infrastructure of the show with us and giving it all that much more attention.

That’s a whole other thing, though. I’ve spoken to so many people about how if you have all eight episodes, you can block shoot, you can shoot everything on the set that you need on that set that saves you time down the road.

WAGNER: Yeah, I mean, we shot in Utah, we shot in Namibia, we shot in New York. We didn’t block shoot, but we kinda did sort of at some point. [Laughs] But yeah, I’m sure we could be a little more economical with our spend if we leaned a little further in that direction.

Bethesda Worked Alongside the ‘Fallout’ Series Creators
Image via Prime Video

You get to reveal the Vault Boy imagery. You get to do cool things that have never been done before. When you’re doing stuff like that, how much do you have to talk to key people at Bethesda and negotiate stuff, and how much do you have the freedom to do what you want?

WAGNER: Well, we send them a script, and then we have a conversation. Those guys have been very, very cool and very open. I think they sort of see us as like a free set of fresh eyes on their franchise. There are certain things that they’re like, “Well, we’ve tried this in the past,” and it’s very conversational. Sometimes we’ll be bumping into things that are happening in future games that they’re planning, but we kind of live in our own sort of silo that coexists with their multiple silos that they have.

Fallout premieres on Prime Video beginning April 11.