The Alan Wake Live-Action Prequel Series You Probably Never Watched
Video game studio Remedy Entertainment released "Alan Wake 2" on October 27, 2023, picking up the Alan Wake series for the first time since the original game's May 2010 debut. That said, "Alan Wake 2" isn't that game's sole continuation — Remedy's 2019 hit "Control," for example, takes place in a shared universe. However, fans of Remedy's recent projects might not know that the studio also premiered a live-action "Alan Wake" prequel TV series in April 2010, just prior to the original video game first hitting store shelves.
This short series is titled "Bright Falls" and consists of six episodes, each roughly five minutes in length. "Alan Wake" takes place in a fictional Washington town called Bright Falls, hence the show's title. Its protagonist is a reporter named Jake Fischer (Christopher Forsyth), who travels to the titular town in order to interview Dr. Emil Hartman (Bruce Katzman), a character quite familiar to existing fans of the franchise. His plans soon go awry once he starts experiencing strange phenomena and even exhibiting violent behavior himself.
While Jake's storyline is contained entirely within the "Bright Falls" series, he's mentioned in the first Alan Wake game, as well as the second "Control" expansion, which overtly ties into "Alan Wake."
Bright Falls attempts to mimic Alan Wake's virtual locations in live action
After the first two episodes of "Bright Falls" premiered online, the series' director, Phillip Van, spoke to The New York Times interviewer Seth Schiesel about what it took to make a live-action web series based on a video game. Understandably, "Bright Falls" was filmed in the Pacific Northwest in order to capture environments that resemble what players encounter in the first "Alan Wake."
Van revealed that the scenes taking place in Dr. Emil Hartman's lodge were actually filmed in the Timberline Lodge, located in Mount Hood, Oregon. In the film world, this real-life hotel is most famous for its exterior, which served as that of the haunted Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror classic "The Shining." The New York Times cites Stephen King — who wrote the original novel on which "The Shining" is based — as an overt influence on "Alan Wake," so the location's significance extends beyond just its resemblance to its video game counterpart.
"Alan Wake" fans interested in streaming "Bright Falls" can find links to each episode on Vimeo through a fan site called Watch Bright Falls, dedicated to the web series.