Looking for your next screenplay idea? Try putting your favorite movie or TV show into a completely different genre. That’s exactly it fall out Co-creator Graham Wagner has done just that, creating one of the most unique shows of 2024.
“We talked a lot in the beginning The good, the bad and the ugly,” the showrunner told me on a recent episode of my podcast Script Apart, describing how the show, praised by critics for its originality, began to imitate.
Mix genres to suit fall out
When it came to adapting one of the biggest video games of the modern era—one with established aesthetics and narrative conventions but no real characters to carry them off—Wagner and co-creator Geneva Robertson-Deworet ultimately turned to Lydia Onne’s prototype was used in his nuclear game. fall out.
The result is three characters battling danger in the Wasteland – a desert teeming with zombies and atomically mutated monsters – for varying amounts of time. Tension and intrigue arise as we wonder whether the show’s protagonist, the sweet-natured Lucy (Ella Purnell), will become as corrupt and violent as the other two characters the show focuses on.
In Sergio Leone’s iconic spaghetti western, we meet three characters who are essentially “different versions of the same cowboy,” according to Wagner. “You start out in the desert as a blonde [Clint Eastwood]but give it enough time and you’ll become a little colder, like Angel Eyes [Lee Van Cleef]. Give evenly more When the time comes, you will become Tuco [Eli Wallach]. The Old West would do this to you.
have common DNA fall out and the Westerns that inspired it. “In a way, Westerns are similar to post-apocalyptic dramas in that they try to rebuild civilization on the ruins of previous civilizations, and end up with violence and lawlessness,” Wagner told me.
But you would never know it the first time you watch this show, it uses The good, the bad and the ugly as a starting point for a show with its own unique tone and vision.
Try it yourself. Which romantic comedy in your Blu-ray cabinet might do well if you blasted its characters into outer space? What would it be like to take elements from your favorite thrillers and insert them into an epic fantasy novel?
Let us know how you get on, and for more inspiration, listen to Script Apart’s full interview with Wagner above.
Read more: Script Separation: ‘Dune’ Screenwriter Eric Roth on Mastering Any Genre
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Al Horner is a journalist, screenwriter and presenter based in London. His work has appeared in The Guardian, Empire, GQ, BBC, White Lies, Time Magazine and more.
