Fallout Season 2 Has Paused Production Amid The Ongoing LA Fires
Fallout’s L.A. location may work in both it and the city’s favor in future.
One of the first scenes of Fallout shows an aging Cooper Howard in a swanky Hollywood home with his daughter, his career apparently having been reduced to entertaining children’s birthday parties. But everything changes when a nuclear bomb goes off, forcing him to find a new irradiated way to survive as the Ghoul. However, as intriguing as the Hollywood setting is in the many flashbacks in the series, the first season of the show was never actually filmed in California; instead, it was shot in New York, New Jersey, Utah, and even Namibia.
Ironically, as Season 2 leaves California for New Vegas, production has now moved to California. But in the wake of the ongoing L.A. fires, production has halted — a sign of both how this crisis affects the TV industry, and how the industry can help in the wake.
Fallout Season 2 has paused production in the wake of fires in Los Angeles.
Multiple series have halted production due to the multiple fires affecting Los Angeles. According to Variety, Fallout is just one of a long list including Suits: L.A., Hacks, Abbott Elementary, and Grey’s Anatomy. The studios of these series aren’t in the area of the fires themselves, but because of poor air quality and traffic conditions, staying at home was deemed the best option.
The wildfires, which started to spread in the second week of January, have burned more than 40 square miles in the Greater Los Angeles area and forced more than 150,000 people to evacuate, with at least 24 people estimated to have lost their lives.
The fires have displaced countless people, and brought much of Hollywood to a standstill. While some series are back in production, the pause is undoubtedly the best thing not only for these series but also for the city itself. Many Los Angeles residents are being evacuated from their homes, and many who aren’t being evacuated are helping those who are. Allowing those working in production — one of the biggest local industries — to focus on their immediate circumstances will mean a better product in the end.
Fallout’s New Vegas story in Season 2 will be filmed in the state of California.
But the very fact that so many shows are filming locally is a testament to how L.A. will recover. Fallout moved production to California to take advantage of the state’s tax credit program, bringing a high-budget production — and all the jobs such a show requires — into the state. This means that when production does actually begin, Fallout will be indirectly helping the city recover from the fires.
These fires may delay production, but that’s a vastly smaller inconvenience compared to so many people are losing their homes. Fallout and shows like it may have a small part in helping recovery, but even that matters. As they say in Hollywood, the show must go on.
