Video games will likely be Hollywood's biggest source of story inspiration, producer and director Jonathan Nolan said Monday, days before the film adaptation of the apocalyptic role-playing game “Fallout.” .
“Fallout,” available starting Thursday, is set 200 years after a nuclear war and follows the descendants of those who hid in bomb shelters as they are forced to return to an irradiated surface plagued by violence, anarchy, and mutants. I have no choice but to do it.
The series was developed by Nolan and his wife Lisa Joy, who co-created the acclaimed series Westworld, which won the Critics' Choice Award for Most Exciting New Series in 2016.
Nolan, the younger brother of Christopher Nolan, whose biopic “Oppenheimer'' won this year's Oscars, also directed the first three episodes of “Fallout.''
The series airs a little more than a year after “The Last of Us,” another post-apocalyptic video game-inspired series.
The Last of Us, by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, was well-received by the public and critics, proving that a successful transition from console to live-action was possible.
Nolan told reporters at the Cannes Film Festival, where “Fallout'' was screened out of competition, “I can't believe it helped that that show came out and it was so great and it was so well received. “Because it took a lot of pressure off.” .
From the 1993 film “Super Mario Bros.” to Netflix's 2022 “Resident Evil” series, video game adaptations for the big and small screens are nothing new, but they're often disappointing.
– “Lifelong gamer”
But that seems to be changing, thanks to directors and producers who grew up playing video games.
“I've been a gamer my whole life,” Nolan said, recalling his fascination with Fallout 3 when it was released 16 years ago.
“It's been in the last few years that I've noticed that video game storytelling has become, in many ways, more ambitious, more avant-garde, more punk rock than film or television,” he said. .
Nolan cited video games such as Half-Life, BioShock, and Portal as good examples of video games “full of breathtaking moments,” some of which were directed by directors from movies or He said he hopes to move on to television.
“In the next few years, we're going to see a lot more talk[on TV and movies]about games as a genre. Games are not a genre,” Nolan said.
-Post-apocalyptic tone-
“Video games are a medium for telling stories, and in many ways right now, if you look at the numbers, the number of people playing them, the size of the industry, they're the biggest medium for telling stories for a while,” he said. added.
The global video game market was valued at $254 billion in 2022 and is expected to exceed $925 billion by 2032, according to market data firm Spherical Insights.
Nolan believes video games are likely to become Hollywood's biggest source of inspiration in the future.
“You know we're very timid in Hollywood, we're conservative,” he said.
“Wait and see if something works.”
Hollywood has long mined comics, including Nolan, who co-wrote the Batman films “The Dark Knight” and “The Dark Knight Rises” with his brother.
While “The Last of Us'' is faithfully based on the game, “Fallout,'' which will be shown on Amazon Prime, creates new characters and a new story.
“The challenge was to find a story that got to the heart of the game, which for me was obviously the post-apocalyptic setting, but most importantly the tone,” Nolan said.
He added, “I've never come across anything quite like it. It's equal parts drama, emotion, but also dark comedy, satire, and politics.”
Nolan said Fallout creator Todd Howard was involved in every step of production, but insisted the show was not intended to be fan service.
“I don't think you can make movies or shows for the fans,” he said. I think it's okay to do it as a fan.
