A Wolfenstein TV series is in development by the Fallout TV series people: 'The story of killing Nazis is evergreen'
Variety reports that Amazon is developing a Wolfenstein TV series with Patrick Somerville, who made post-apocalyptic miniseries Station Eleven and wrote some of HBO's The Leftovers (a show with a genuinely good twist), and Kilter Films, the production company behind Amazon's Fallout TV show.
Variety says that the show's being pitched with the one-sentence description: "The story of killing Nazis is evergreen."
That echoes the tone of the recent Wolfenstein games from Bethesda and MachineGames. Back in 2017 (which I guess is not all that recent… time flies), Bethesda advertised Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus with lines like "Make America Nazi-Free Again," which predictably led to complaints.
"This is what our game is about," said Pete Hines, Bethesda's senior VP of marketing at the time. "It's what this franchise has always been about. We aren't afraid to embrace what BJ stands for and what Wolfenstein represents. When it comes to Nazis, you can put us down in the 'against' column."
Wolfenstein lead protagonist BJ Blazkowicz is indeed a prolific guy as far as fictional Nazi killers go, having officially been around and shooting Nazis since Wolfenstein 3D in 1992, which came after '80s games Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, in which the protagonist was unnamed.
Lots of TV shows and movies 'enter development,' and only so many actually get made. After the success of Fallout, though, this one seems pretty likely to actually appear on our screens. Amazon's also working on a Mass Effect show and a Warhammer 40K series from Henry Cavill.
On the topic of TV shows that are announced and then disappear into the void, this news got me wondering what happened to the live action Assassin's Creed show we heard about years ago, and it turns out Netflix recently announced that it's finally going forward with it.