HBO Max has another hit on their hands with their live-action adaptation of the hit video game franchise The Last of Us. The series quickly became the second biggest debut for a HBO series within the past ten years and it has already been renewed for a second season. Previously, it was revealed that the streaming numbers for the series outpaced Game of Thrones‘ House of the Dragon spinoff. Now, it seems that the series has broken another record. According to Nielsen (Via Deadline), The Last of Us has finally crossed one billion streaming minutes watched after the release of the fifth episode. The series crossed 1.2 billion minutes viewed as of the week of January 30th-February 5th.
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Craig Mazin, the Emmy-winning creator of HBO’s Chernobyl, produced The Last of Us alongside Druckmann, the creator behind the hit video game series. In an interview earlier this year, the writer said The Last of Us is the “greatest” video game story ever told. “It’s an open-and-shut case: this is the greatest story that has ever been told in video games,” Mazin said in an interview with Empire Magazine. “[Joel and Ellie] didn’t shoot anything out of their eyeballs. They were just people. And that, in and of itself, is remarkably rare in games. The fact that they kept it so grounded, and really made you feel – I had never experienced anything like it, and I’ve been playing video games since 1977.”
Joining Pascal (Joel) and Ramsey (Ellie) include Gabriel Luna as Tommy, Anna Torv as Tess, Nico Parker as Sarah, Murray Bartlett as Frank, Nick Offerman as Bill, Melanie Lynskey as Kathleen, Storm Reid as Riley, Merle Dandridge as Marlene, Jeffrey Pierce as Perry, Lamar Johnson as Henry, Keivonn Woodard as Sam, Graham Greene as Marlon, and Elaine Miles as Florence. Original game stars Ashley Johnson and Troy Baker, having played the part of Ellie and Joel in both video games, are also set to appear.
The first seven episodes of The Last of Us are now streaming on HBO Max. The show’s first season is set to last nine episodes in total with new episodes rolling out on a weekly basis.
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