The Last of Us series on HBO is confirmed to be adapting the first game for its inaugural season. The 2013 game from Naughty Dog Studios is hailed as one of the greatest games of the last decade, if not of all time, and there are many moving parts as to why that is. Not only is it considered an effective survival horror game, but the story at its heart is considered a modern feat of gaming. The Last of Us follows Joel as he escorts a young girl named Ellie across a post-apocalyptic United States in hopes of finding the cure for a virus that turns people in Clickers.
Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian) will be playing Joel with Bella Ramsey (Game of Thrones) as Ellie. No other casting details have been announced yet, but HBO has picked up the show to series ahead of shooting the pilot. Neil Druckmann, director of both the first and second game, will serve as executive producer on the series. Little is known about the show, but Druckmann has given some new insight into how the games will be adapted.
Druckmann told IGN that The Last of Us will be adapting the first game for its first season. He says that they discussed at length how to adapt the story for television, saying that the "philosophical underpinnings of the story" were key to how the story would translate to the screen. Druckmann also says that while the story beats will be familiar, some of the series will deviate greatly from the game's plot.
We talked at length that season 1 of the show is going to be [the first game]. As far as the superficial things, like should [a character] wear the same plaid shirt or the same red shirt? They might or might not appear in it, that’s way less important to us than getting the core of who these people are and the core of their journey.
Things sometimes stay pretty close. It’s funny to see my dialogue there from the games in HBO scripts. And sometimes they deviate greatly to much better effect because we are dealing with a different medium.
How much the story of The Last of Us will differ remains to be seen, but there are some key things to consider when developing a video game for the screen. Much of the video game is spent following Ellie and Joel as they stealthily navigate cityscapes trying to avoid Clickers (this universe's version of zombies) who are particularly attuned to sound and will descend on those who make any noise in their vicinity. It's safe to say that these scenes will be greatly reduced in length and using sparingly for maximum effect.
At its heart, The Last of Us is a story about parenthood. Joel, still reeling from the traumatic loss of his daughter in the opening moments of the first game, forms a unique bond with Ellie as they move across the United States. That effects many of the decisions he makes as they traverse a brand new world and the show will likely want to dive deep into this relationship as it has implications far beyond the first game. The Last of Us Part II became just as critically acclaimed as the first, if a bit more divisive for fans, and that's all thanks to how Ellie and Joel's relationship evolves. The Last of Us will have to respect that core relationship in its first season in order to tell the stories of its later seasons.
Source: IGN