We haven’t received a proper Wolfenstein game since 2019’sWolfenstein: Youngbloodand its VR accompaniment Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot, with developer MachineGames moving on to other projects and seemingly leaving the property behind. And yet, a Wolfenstein adaptation has perhaps never beensotimely.
That’s why it’s good news that Amazon has greenlit yet another video game adaptation, which will be joiningFallout,God of War, andMass Effecton the streaming platform.Wolfensteinisgetting a TV show produced by Kilter Films, the same studio behind the critically acclaimed and much beloved Fallout series, which may bode well for its eventual success. Patrick Somerville, who was behind Maniac and Station Eleven, will serve as showrunner.
Amazon is clearly trying to capitalise on Fallout’s success, but it’s worth noting Amazon also produced the very badYakuzaadaptation which I bet you forgot existed.
The Only Good Nazi Is A…?
The modernWolfensteintitles - New Order and New Colossus - bludgeon you over the head with their messaging, though you’re not going to hear me complaining about this particular message. The series is set in an alternate history where the Axis powers won World War 2 and the Nazis managed to expand their reach across the world. B.J. Blazkowicz, an American of Polish Jewish heritage, is a beloved protagonist and bona fide Nazi-killer. This is his whole deal. Every game to date has been about killing Nazis.
Wolfenstein has courted controversy in the past, though you wouldn’t think that being anti-Nazi would be all that controversial in the first place. Back in 2017, when MachineGames’Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossuswas rolling out its pre-launch marketing campaign, itgot some backlashfor tweeting things like “Make America Nazi-Free Again” and “#NoMoreNazis”.
MachineGames later went on to makeIndiana Jones and the Great Circle,another game where you get to beat up Nazis.
Former Bethesda marketing and PR VP Pete Hines defended the messages inan interview with GamesIndustry.biz, saying, “Wolfenstein has been a decidedly anti-Nazi series since the first release… We don’t feel it’s a reach for us to say Nazis are bad and un-American, and we’re not worried about being on the right side of history here.” That the game coincided with the rise of neo-Nazism in America at the time was a coincidence, but as Hines said, “It’s disturbing that the game can be considered a controversial political statement at all.”
We Don’t Know When We’ll See Wolfenstein’s Adaptation
I couldn’t help but remember these statements when I saw the logline for the television show: “The story of killing Nazis is evergreen.” One would hope that Wolfenstein would have grown less culturally relevant over time, but this isn’t the case – just this year, we saw billionaire Elon Muskappear to make Nazi salutes at US President Donald Trump’s inauguration rally. Musk, naturally, dismissed the accusations, butwhite supremacists embraced the scandal regardless.
Sadly, anti-Nazi stories are evergreen, because Nazis seem to be evergreen. It’s a little interesting that Jeff Bezos’ company is behind this adaptation, consideringBezos was in attendance at Trump’s inaugurationalongside other tech tycoons, but I guess that adaptation money is too sweet to give up.
Then again, Amazonhasalready done several shows about killing Nazis, like Hunters and The Man in the High Castle. It would be interesting to see how Prime takes on Wolfenstein – would it chart the long history of the games, tracking from World War 2 to the Second American Revolution? The Fallout approach of using the same world but different plots and characters definitely wouldn’t work, since Blazkowicz is the core of the series.
Whatever approach Amazon takes, it’s hard to say when we’ll see this show actually hit streaming platforms – plenty of shows are announced and then never see the light of day. If it does eventually get made, here’s hoping that it won’t be quite as relevant as it is now. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of people screaming that they ‘made Wolfenstein woke’ regardless.
