I’m not sure why, but it appears there is some interest in a Fallout movie. Such a thing makes no sense to me- the Fallout games are defined by their emergent experiences, enabled by a meticulously crafted world that feels whole, complete, and cohesive. A movie would by definition impose a linear narrative and interpretation for the world onto this framework. It could never work.
Thankfully, it appears Bethesda agrees with me on this. Speaking to GI.biz, Bethesda’s Todd Howard revealed that the studio has, over the years, received multiple offers for a Fallout movie- and it has turned them down each time.
“We’ve had a couple of in-roads, particularly with Fallout, which is a bit stickier than Elder Scrolls, but everybody’s kind of asked and I’ve taken a number of meetings over the years and nothing quite clicked where I felt, ‘Oh, that would be as good as the game,'” Howard explained. “And that may happen. I don’t rule it out, but nothing really has clicked where–the games are popular enough and that’s their identity.
“Fallout 4, if there had been a Fallout movie, you’d feel different about Fallout when we’d announced Fallout 4 and one of them wouldn’t be quite right and you wouldn’t want that to be the game, where the movie takes it in another direction,” he mused.
“I would say we have a pretty high bar as far as what we would want it to be if it ever happened and nothing’s quite clicked. Even little things like, ‘What does the vault suit look like?’ – every little thing we obsess over so the game is the thing where it really exists,” he finished.
As I said above, it makes sense- Bethesda’s games, especially, live and die by their worlds- and that is not something they would want to compromise at any cost.