Sony and HBO announced they were working on a The Last of Us TV adaptation in March 2020, a few months before the release of The Last of Us Part II on PlayStation 4. It will be the first HBO adaptation of a game, and rumors suggest it was the largest TV production in Canadian history; the first season was filmed in Calgary, Alberta. Series co-creator Neil Druckmann has been heavily involved, writing alongside Craig Mazin, who worked on the highly acclaimed Chernobyl HBO miniseries as well as feature films like Scary Movie 3 and 4, The Hangover Part II and III, The Huntsman: Winter’s War, and the upcoming Borderlands adaptation featuring Cate Blanchett. Music composer Gustavo Santaolalla is returning from his work on the games. Casting choices for The Last of Us TV series include Pedro Pascal as Joel, Bella Ramsey as Ellie, Gabriel Luna as Tommy, Merle Dandridge as Marlene, Anna Torv as Tess, Storm Reid as Riley Abel, and Nick Offerman as Bill. Druckmann already warned fans that the adaptation may deviate greatly in places. We talked at length that season 1 of The Last of Us series is going to be the first game. As far as the superficial things, like should a character wear the same plaid shirt or the same red shirt? They might or might not appear in it, that’s way less important to us than getting the core of who these people are and the core of their journey. Things sometimes stay pretty close. It’s funny to see my dialogue there from the games in HBO scripts. And sometimes they deviate greatly to much better effect because we are dealing with a different medium. For example, in the game, there’s so much action you have to have to train the player about mechanics. You have to have more violence and more spectacle to some degree than you would need on a TV show because you don’t need to train people on how to use a gun. So that’s something that’s been really different, and HBO’s been great in pushing us to move away from hardcore action and focus more on the drama of the character. Some of my favorite episodes so far have deviated greatly from the story, and I can’t wait for people to see them. The Last of Us TV will drop on HBO Max sometime in early 2023.
