Write On: 'Fallout' Co-Creator & Showrunner Graham Wagner
August 15, 2024
Almost all the characters [in Fallout, the TV show] are brand new… We really took the world of Fallout that had been built up and iterated upon by other video game writers over the years and we wanted to do our own version of it rather than retell any version that someone else has already done. Our attitude was like, ‘Okay, let's say this is a new Fallout game. What would it be?’ So, we took the world, the background, the themes of the games, and the tone. It's a new story. New people,” says Graham Wagner, co-creator and showrunner of Fallout on Amazon Prime.
In this episode of Final Draft's Write On podcast, we talk with Graham Wagner about Fallout, a show based on the beloved videogame, that’s earned 17 Emmy nominations including Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series. Wagner talks about taking the structure and tone from Sergio Leone’s Western, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and focusing on three central figures: Lucy (Ella Purnell), The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) and Maximus (Aaron Moten), and intertwining their disparate storylines.
“We made an intentional collision of genres because Walton Goggins' character is very much of the wasteland of the Western genre, which is sort of apocalyptic in its own way, depending on your perspective. There isn't the infrastructure and people are trying to build civilization on the ashes of the civilization that has been eradicated before them. You know there's a lot of parallels there,” says Wagner.
To learn more about the show Fallout and hear Wagner’s advice for writing TV pilots, listen to the podcast.
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Written by: Shanee Edwards
Shanee Edwards is an L.A.-based screenwriter, journalist and novelist who recently won The Next MacGyver television writing competition to create a TV show about a female engineer and was honored to be mentored by actress/producers America Ferrera. Shanee's first novel, Ada Lovelace: The Countess Who Dreamed in Numbers was published by Conrad Press in 2019. Currently, she is working on a biopic of controversial nurse Florence Nightingale. Shanee’s ultimate goal is to tell stories about strong, spirited women whose passion, humor and courage inspire us all.
