A TV Series based on Fallout

I

Indianajoneszilla

First time out of the vault
Okay, a few friends and I have been discussing this business of Fallout becoming a TV Series. We decided to write (or at least try) a 3 Season Fallout TV series set AFTER the events of Fallout: New Vegas.
The premise is a follows:
After the NCR victory at Hoover Dam, the Courier left the Mojave for good, disgusted by his actions during the NCR-Legion War. The Legion, fleeing either back to Arizona or heading up to Utah to find the Burned Man have been fractured, while most Securitrons have mysteriously disappeared or have broken down following the death of House.
The NCR, however, as grown tired of their wars and have decided to instead disband most of their military and center on their own territories.
Yet, the Brotherhood of Steel remains on the run from NCR guards and Rangers, and have fled south of Baja. This is where our main character comes into play.

Josh is a kid from a rural town defended by the Brotherhood (who have cut off access from the rest of the world over a few generations) The towns supply of water becomes poisoned, and Paladin Horkus (Josh's mentor) convinces the Town council to give Josh an old PipBoy 2000 (If you can take a guess where THAT came from, you get a cookie) and send him off. Finding the Ranger station at Baja (and fighting off a Deathclaw,) Josh is interrogated by Ranger Cass (Not Rose) Who is discouraged to learn contingents of the Brotherhood have survived the NCR's war. However, after learning of Josh's predicament, she agrees to help him as it would 1. Save the NCR's southern provinces and 2. Help her find the Brotherhood. The two set off to the now mostly-clean Glow, which is slowly being recolonized after nearly 200 years of isolation. The two meet Hannon, a down on his luck gambler from New Reno (more revealed later on why he's down in California) and save him from raiders. The three continue their travels, happening upon a town harassed by mutated raccoons (kind of like the ones cut from Fallout 1) and finally fall upon an NCR outpost harassed by Super Mutants. Cass and Josh are captured by INTELLIGENT Super Mutants, who bring them back to Vault 7, a control Vault which never received the all clear, but instead (as of 2256) a batch of FEV and directions on how to mass produce it. Ever since, the Vault has been creating super Mutants for their higher-ups, and are ready to start Expansion into the Wastes. In order to do so, they had to poison a water supply (which led to a larger aquifer that fed the NCR) to allow them to function. As Cass and Josh are about to be transformed (thus rendered compliant and willing soldiers,) Hannon returns, killing the leader of the Super Mutants with a Fat Man, while allowing Cass and Josh to escape. Josh grabs a holodisk of messages to find out who created the FEV orders, the the trio escape into the Wastes. Once Josh returns to his Village, Horkus and the rest of the Brotherhood are horrified to see Cass, who had ordered NCR units to remain on Standby to storm the small town. Josh manages to calm the tensions, citing that another NCR-Brotherhood war would devastate and kill hundreds of innocent civilians. Horkus and the town elders agree that the hatchet must be buried, and begin peace talks with NCR.

Yet, in a base near the Midwest, a mysterious figure gets word that the Super mutants have fled their vault since they have been discovered. The Man simply stamps out his cigar, and orders Phase 2 to begin.
In the backround, Patriotic American music can be heard on a radio.
I might post some more ideas from Season's 2 and 3 based on how this goes.
Thanks for reading!
 
Well, the premise you lay out sounds like a solid enough start; were you able to reach the point where you could produce this, it sounds like a fun idea.

However, reaching that point is the difficult part, and before we get into that I have some questions. First, you say you want to make a TV series. Does that mean an actual TV show on network/cable TV? Or are you considering self-producing an internet based episodic program? There's also a million and one options between the two extremes.

If you're considering creating an idea for a show and then pitching it to a studio in the hope of it being picked up and made into a network or cable TV show, you're in for a long, difficult, and unlikely to succeed journey. It's hard as hell to sell an idea to Hollywood under normal circumstances, and right now things are even harder due to the changing nature of the business thanks to technology advances, the internet, and the economy being a shit hole. However that said, you do have one big thing going for you: anything with a guarantee of viewership from a pre-existing fan base (IE sequels, reboots, and based-on-a-popular-blank) is a million and one times more likely to get green lit in today's economy. However from what I hear most people want to see completed product before they endorse anything these days: it used to be that if you had a good idea you could find a studio, tell them about it, and convince them to help you make it, but these days you basically have to make it yourself first and the studios will only get involved if they think it can make money and when you've already done most of the early work for them.

If you're interested in self funding and self producing for the internet, that's a whole different thing: it's much less dependent on where you are (you basically have to be in LA or NYC for the studio pitch option), and much more dependent on what resources you have available to you. But of course you'll run into a lot of your own problems on that end too, first of all being where you get the money to make the thing and second where do you get the people to help you do it.

As someone who has produced short films in both rural nowhere (south of Boston) and the big city (Los Angeles), I can tell you that it is hard as hell to make something like what you describe no matter where you are, but I do whole heartedly encourage you to go ahead and do it anyway: no movie or TV show would ever get made anywhere by anyone if the makers were not willing to lose a lot of time, money, sanity, and blood to do it.

EDIT: And I won't even start on the headache you'll run into trying to get Bethesda to grant you the rights to make a TV show based on their franchise. That alone is enough to make most mere mortals turn tail and flee.
 
InTheOnlineAsbestosSuit said:
Well, the premise you lay out sounds like a solid enough start; were you able to reach the point where you could produce this, it sounds like a fun idea.

However, reaching that point is the difficult part, and before we get into that I have some questions. First, you say you want to make a TV series. Does that mean an actual TV show on network/cable TV? Or are you considering self-producing an internet based episodic program? There's also a million and one options between the two extremes.

If you're considering creating an idea for a show and then pitching it to a studio in the hope of it being picked up and made into a network or cable TV show, you're in for a long, difficult, and unlikely to succeed journey. It's hard as hell to sell an idea to Hollywood under normal circumstances, and right now things are even harder due to the changing nature of the business thanks to technology advances, the internet, and the economy being a shit hole. However that said, you do have one big thing going for you: anything with a guarantee of viewership from a pre-existing fan base (IE sequels, reboots, and based-on-a-popular-blank) is a million and one times more likely to get green lit in today's economy. However from what I hear most people want to see completed product before they endorse anything these days: it used to be that if you had a good idea you could find a studio, tell them about it, and convince them to help you make it, but these days you basically have to make it yourself first and the studios will only get involved if they think it can make money and when you've already done most of the early work for them.

If you're interested in self funding and self producing for the internet, that's a whole different thing: it's much less dependent on where you are (you basically have to be in LA or NYC for the studio pitch option), and much more dependent on what resources you have available to you. But of course you'll run into a lot of your own problems on that end too, first of all being where you get the money to make the thing and second where do you get the people to help you do it.

As someone who has produced short films in both rural nowhere (south of Boston) and the big city (Los Angeles), I can tell you that it is hard as hell to make something like what you describe no matter where you are, but I do whole heartedly encourage you to go ahead and do it anyway: no movie or TV show would ever get made anywhere by anyone if the makers were not willing to lose a lot of time, money, sanity, and blood to do it.

EDIT: And I won't even start on the headache you'll run into trying to get Bethesda to grant you the rights to make a TV show based on their franchise. That alone is enough to make most mere mortals turn tail and flee.
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Sir, thank you. Seeing shows like Nuka Break or Fallout: Lanius shows that maybe an internet based show would be the best bet for something like this.
However, probably the hardest part of this entire thing would be props. Ghouls/Ruins alone would be hard, and actual super mutants would be nearly impossible. Would there be any way to create a super mutant with an independent budget?
 
Largely depends on what constitutes "Independent Budget" and where you are. In L.A., an indie budget can be in 15-30k or more for a handful of webisodes, but you'll have every possible resource within 40 minutes of you. In, well, almost anywhere else, you're looking at spending less than 5K but you'll have to really hunt for the gear and crew and actors you'll need to make a good product.
 
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