The Last of Us Co-Creator Admits He Blew Off HBO Showrunner at First
HBO is getting ready to release their live-action adaptation of the hit video game The Last of Us, and it's shaping up to be one of the biggest series next year. The Last of Us is being produced by the creator of the game, Neil Druckmann, and Craig Mazin, who will serve as showrunner for the series. Before Mazin came aboard, the project was being touted for a feature film release until he convinced Druckmann to turn it into a series. But it seems as if Druckmann dismissed the idea of Mazin coming aboard the project until he met with him. During a new interview with The New Yorker, Druckmann said that he "blew him off" because he didn't "know who he was". Then, when they met each other, they began geeking out I've each others work and came to the realization that The Last of Us would not work as a series.
Mazin, the Emmy-winning creator of HBO's Chernobyl, produced the series alongside Neil 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 Bella 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 Last of Us is set to arrive next month across HBO and HBO Max on January 15th. 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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