Naughty Dog co-president Neil Druckmann has explained what happened to The Last of Us‘ planned film adaptation.
Announced in 2014, The Last of Us‘ movie was set to be written by Druckmann, with Sam Raimi producing. Two years later, however, the film fell into development limbo due to creative differences between Druckmann and Sony. “When I worked on the movie version, a lot of the thinking and notes were like ‘How do we make it bigger? How do we make the set pieces bigger?'” Druckmann told Collider. “I think that’s ultimately why the movie wasn’t made.”
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Druckmann is now serving as co-head writer/executive producer on HBO’s The Last of Us TV series with Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin. “Our approach for The Last of Us was ‘Let’s make it as an indie film. Let’s approach it as an indie film team, the way it’s shot [and in terms of] how small and intimate it feels,” Druckman explained. “And with the show we get to lean into that even more because we don’t have to have as many action sequences as we do in the game.”
HBO’s The Last of Us has already assembled a prestigious lineup of directing talent for its first season, with acclaimed Russian filmmaker Kantemir Balagov helming the pilot. Other episodes will be directed by Ali Abbasi, winner of the Un Certain Regard Award at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, and Jasmila Žbanić, whose most recent movie, Quo Vadis, Aida?, was nominated for Best International Feature Film at the 2021 Oscars ceremony.
The synopsis for the series reads,
Based on the critically acclaimed video game The Last of Us, developed by Naughty Dog exclusively for the PlayStation® platforms, the story takes place twenty years after modern civilization has been destroyed. Joel, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle Ellie, a 14-year-old girl, out of an oppressive quarantine zone. 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.
Written by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, HBO’s The Last of Us is a co-production with Sony Pictures Television and stars Bella Ramsey as Ellie, Pedro Pascal as Joel and Gabriel Luna as Tommy. Director Kantemir Balagov will be helming the series’ pilot episode.
Source: Collider
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