Speaking at the premiere of Amazon’s Fallout show in Los Angeles, Bethesda’s Todd Howard admitted he’ll likely turn down any pitches for a TV adaptation of The Elder Scrolls. Not only that, but he was initially against the idea of a Fallout TV show.
When asked by IGN if other Bethesda properties will see similar adaptations in the wake of Fallout, Howard revealed there’s nothing in the works at the moment, adding, “Everybody asks, like, about Elder Scrolls, and I keep saying no also. And I would approach those—I’ll probably say no.”
This may seem baffling since video game adaptations are all the rage nowadays, plus Elder Scrolls is a very popular franchise. However, Howard explained how he rejected pitches for a Fallout show, as well as a movie, for about a decade. Amazon’s adaptation only became about because he hit things off with Jonathan Nolan, who serves as an executive producer on the show.
Howard loved Nolan’s work as a writer on movies like The Dark Knight and Interstellar, and after meeting and speaking with him, Howard “felt like, ‘hey, do you wanna do this? I’d like to approach it like it’s another entry in the games.’ Like, let’s do a new location, new story, let him and his crazy lunatic people he works with kind of do what they do.”
It very much sounds like Howard doesn’t want to make an Elder Scrolls show just for the sake of it. He felt the same way about Fallout, adding, “I think this really came out of, ‘we think things are aligning to do a high-quality job.’ It wasn’t forced. It was kind of a natural relationship and ‘hey, this sounds really cool.'”
This news may be disappointing to some, but at least this means if Howard ever changes his mind (which he doesn’t rule out), it’ll be because he’s found the right creative partner for an Elder Scrolls show. Fallout may have required something of a ‘stars aligning’ moment for it to come to be, but Howard’s insistence on letting it happen naturally seems to have paid off, with the Fallout show getting near rave reviews from critics. You can watch all eight episodes right now if you want as long as you have access to Amazon Prime Video.
