With 2023 right around the corner, we’re lucky to have one of the biggest series of the new year, “The Last of Us,” be one of the first things we see. HBO is debuting the first episode of the highly-anticipated post-apocalyptic series (based on the massively popular video game franchise) on January 15. However, the version you’ll be seeing in just a couple of weeks is very different than what could have been, if “The Last of Us” was made into a film years ago, as was intended.
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As revealed in a New Yorker profile, “The Last of Us” is a long time coming to screen. The game was released nearly a decade ago and shortly after its release, in 2014, Hollywood came calling. The rights were acquired by Screen Gems (the genre-focused subsidiary of Sony Pictures), and the studio had enlisted none other than horror maestro, Sam Raimi, to helm the film.
On paper, this makes sense. “The Last of Us” takes place in a post-apocalypse where humans have been infected by a fungus that turns people’s brains into mush and makes them zombies. The game follows middle-aged grump, Joel, as he has to chaperone a young girl, Ellie, across the wasteland in hopes that she might be the key to saving humanity. This seems like perfect fodder for a Sam Raimi film. However, the game’s creator, Neil Druckmann had some concerns.
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The studio executives kept asking for the action to be “bigger” and “sexier.” Druckmann was hoping for something more like “No Country for Old Men” and less like what Screen Gems wanted, which was a new “World War Z.” Then came Druckmann’s concern about taking hours and hours of narrative from the game and condensing it into one two-hour feature. Even though he is a fan of Raimi, Druckmann hoped for better.
So, years later, with HBO now in charge of the adaptation, Druckmann was excited that the video game is now being turned into a big-budget TV series, with “Chernobyl” creator, Craig Mazin, aboard to write and showrun. With Mazin involved and Druckmann there to help consult and craft the series, the creators both hoped they could avoid the typical video game adaptation pitfalls.
“The other thing that people get wrong is that they think people want to see the gameplay onscreen,” said Druckmann about where previous films/TV shows based on video games have failed.
By focusing on the emotions and not on the violence, Mazin and Druckmann are hoping “The Last of Us” will shatter viewers’ preconceived notions of video game adaptations. And when there is violence, they want it to be devastating.
“When you’re playing a section [of the game], you’re killing people, and when you die you get sent back to the checkpoint. All those people are back, moving around in the same way,” said Mazin. “Watching a person die, I think, ought to be much different than watching pixels die.”
As mentioned, “The Last of Us” is one of the most-anticipated series of 2023, and for good reason. It really does seem that Mazin and Druckmann are crafting something truly special and different from previous video game adaptations. “The Last of Us,” again, debuts on HBO on January 15, 2023.