Denis Villeneuve is working on an adaptation of Annie Jacobsen's Nuclear War: A Scenario, and nuclear expert Dr. Emma Belcher says, if done right, it will be the ultimate warning against its titular form of warfare. Villeneuve, best known for his work in the sci-fi genre with Arrival, Blade Runner 2049 and the Timothée Chalamet-led Dune adaptations, first signed on to helm the adaptation of Jacobsen's novel in early 2024, reuniting with Legendary Entertainment and planning a 2027 release.
Published in 2024, Nuclear War: A Scenario is a mixture of fiction and non-fictional storytelling, pulling from expert interviews and declassified documents to explore what a thermonuclear explosion above the Pentagon would be. Primarily set across the subsequent 72 minutes as the US government plans their retaliation, leading to a global conflict with humanity-changing consequences. The novel has garnered widespread acclaim and made it onto the New York Times Best Seller list, peaking at No. 4, while also placing at the same spot overall in the US on Amazon's Best Non-Fiction Books of 2024.
As development on the film continues, ScreenRant's Grant Hermanns interviewed nuclear expert Dr. Emma Belcher to discuss nuclear depictions in media, particularly the ongoing Fallout season 2. When asked about other titles that she's found offer realistic depictions of a nuclear fallout, the Ploughshares President began by acknowledging it to be a "challenging question," particularly as many films and shows "avoid depicting the fallout itself," citing Netflix's A House of Dynamite as an example.
After also conceding that such a topic is "really quite hard" to depict and "not everyone's cup of tea," Dr. Belcher went on to express her excitement for Villeneuve's adaptation of Nuclear War: A Scenario. Praising the novel as being "a page-turner," the nuclear expert is particularly excited to see "how they treat the reality of the post-detonation world":
Dr. Emma Belcher: That is something I'm going to be watching for. I hope that they do it justice. It's a mix between fiction and nonfiction, and it's all based on interviews with 40 people who worked on this issue in government during the Cold War. But she creates a scenario about what might happen, so it's kind of a nice blend.
To Dr. Belcher's point, A House of Dynamite not showing the aftermath of the nuclear explosion was a big point of division among both critics and audiences, many of whom felt it lacked any satisfying conclusion. However, as the Ploughshares President also argued to ScreenRant, the point of Kathryn Bigelow's film was more the real possibility of the breakdown in communications amid the sudden discovery of an incoming intercontinental ballistic missile.
Interestingly, Nuclear War: A Scenario and A House of Dynamite have drawn numerous comparisons between each other, with rumors indicating Bigelow had originally wanted to adapt Jacobsen's book before Legendary acquired it. The two films do share a relatively similar structure, as both are structured on real data and interviews with experts, though the Netflix thriller kept who actually launched the missile a mystery, whereas Jacobsen's book actually confirms it to be North Korea.
The other big difference, as Belcher refers to, is Nuclear War: A Scenario exploring what the post-nuclear apocalypse will look like. Apart from the Fallout franchise, few properties have actually explored how a nuclear apocalypse would actually impact the world, from lingering radiation in the water and certain areas, to the impact on the ozone.
While Jacobsen's novel doesn't spend as much time on this period, Villeneuve could take the opportunity with Nuclear War: A Scenario to split the source material in two and give the fallout era a bigger focus. However, even if choosing to focus more on the build up to the titular catastrophe, the four-time Oscar nominee can thoroughly surpass A House of Dynamite to become the most harrowing advocation for nuclear deterrence.
