THE LAST OF US Creator Says The Series Will Be "The Best, Most Authentic Game Adaptation"
The Last of Us creator, co-writer, and producer of the upcoming HBO series adaptation, Neil Druckmann, is building some major hype for the show, and in his most recent interview with the New Yorker, he says that his adaptation of the critically-acclaimed game will be "the best, most authentic game adaptation" ever.
I would love nothing more than for that to be true. All of the footage that has been released so far teases a great-looking show and I think that it might actually deliver the goods! When sharing his thoughts on the series, he said:
"I think it will change things. Sometimes adaptations haven’t worked because the source material is not strong enough. Sometimes they haven’t worked because the people making it don’t understand the source material."
Druckmann and screenwriter Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) are approaching the game differently but they are making an effort to respect the source material. Mazin explained: “I love the ability to wander, to do nothing, in Skyrim. [But] that is not translatable! The Last of Us was always a story where the story comes first.”
Bruckmann went on to confidently state that this will put the “video-game curse to bed” and believes that the show "will be the best, most authentic game adaptation". Mazin amusingly responded saying that’s "not the highest bar in the world". He added:
"I cheated - I just took the one with the best story. Like, I love Assassin’s Creed. But when they announced that they were gonna make it as a movie I was, like, I don’t know how! Because the joy of it is the gameplay. The story is impenetrable."
Druckmann went on to explain that one of the other things that people get wrong when adapting a game is that “they think people want to see the gameplay onscreen.” He went on to talk about flow of the series and allowing the audience to connect with the main characters:
“We need a certain amount of action, or violence, that we could use for mechanics so you could connect with Joel and get into a flow state. Then you would really feel like you’re connected with this on-screen avatar and you’re seeing the world through his eyes.
He also previously talked about scaling back on violence for the series, and explained:
“One of the things that I loved hearing from [Mazin] and HBO very early on was, ‘Let’s take out all the violence except for the very essential'. That allowed the violence to have even more impact than in the game, because when you hold on showing the threat and you’re seeing people’s reaction to a threat, that makes it scarier."
Pedro Pascal stars in the series as Joel, and Bella Ramsey is taking on the role of Ellie in the upcoming video game adaptation. They are joined by Gabriel Luna as Joel's brother Tommy, Anna Torv, Merle Dandrige, Nick Offerman, Storm Reid, Nico Parker, Gabriel Luna, Jeffrey Pierce, and Murray Bartlett.
The Last of Us takes place 20 years after modern civilization has been destroyed by a deadly virus. Joel (Pascal), a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle Ellie (Ramsey), a 14-year-old girl, out of an oppressive quarantine zone to the Fireflies, a cure-searching organization. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey, as they both must traverse across the U.S. and depend on each other for survival.
Craig Mazin, the creator of HBO’s acclaimed limited series Chernobyl, wrote The Last of Us and is also executive producing with Neil Druckmann, who is the writer and creative director of the game.
The series drops on HBO Max on January 15th, 2023.