After last year’s massive hit release by Bethesda Game Studios, Fallout 4, questions have been raised by fans (and have been for some time now) about whether or not there would ever be a film adaptation of the series. The games take place in a post-apocalyptic era, with the latest installment being set in Boston and surrounding areas. They use a very impressive open-world format, and allow the user to role-play with the protagonist to endless heights and boundaries.
With the record-setting size of the playable map and the extensive storylines available, there’s plenty of room where a possible film or television adaptation could actually work. Along with that series is an equally popular one: Elder Scrolls. These games take the player into a mythical medieval-like world, with the easiest comparison being one similar to that of HBO‘s Game of Thrones.
And apparently, unbeknownst to the public, there have been multiple pitches by filmmakers to potentially take on these enormous projects. Todd Howard, an executive producer at Bethesda, recently spoke to Games Industry about it and revealed what’s come of the ideas that have come through the studio’s door over the years. Not surprisingly, considering the many creative tests that an adaptation like this would need to pass for Bethesda to give the green light, all have been turned down so far:
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.’ And that may happen. I don’t rule it out, but nothing really has clicked [whereas] the games are popular enough and that’s their identity.
So Howard definitely isn’t opposed to the idea, especially with the studio’s game having such a wide fanbase. If one pitch was successful, there would be many different avenues an expansive story like that of Fallout or Elder Scrolls could take in the film medium. Howard also mentioned in the interview about possibly damaging people’s view of the Fallout 4 game itself around its release, if a film had been announced:
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…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.
His comments are accurate in thinking about what the involvement of a big movie studio could do when working with Bethesda. Some might work more collaboratively like with Ubisoft Entertainment in the upcoming Assassin’s Creed film, but other studios may simply obtain the rights then go off in a completely different direction creatively than what the original source material beckons for. But just the idea of seeing a Bethesda game turn into a film or television show is a nice thing to consider.
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