Write On: 'Fallout' Co-Creator & Showrunner Graham Wagner

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 the 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.