Back in March, about a week before the spread of the coronavirus was officially recognized as a pandemic, HBO announced that it was developing an adaptation of Naughty Dog’s The Last Of Us video game—a critically acclaimed, widely beloved story about a grizzled survivor and a girl who becomes his surrogate daughter making their way through a United States that has been utterly devastated by a virus that turns people into monsters. Trust us, it was a lot more exciting pre-COVID-19. Anyway, the surprising prestige hook of HBO’s adaptation plan was that its Last Of Us limited series would be run by both Neil Druckmann (the game’s writer and creative director) and Craig Mazin, the creator of the similarly acclaimed Chernobyl miniseries, who are essentially the absolute ideal duo to be making this thing.
Now, the prestige is getting even more prestigious, with The Hollywood Reporter saying that Mazin is bringing in his Chernobyl director Johan Renck to direct The Last Of Us. Renck won an Emmy for his work on the real-life near-apocalypse miniseries, so again, this seems like the ideal situation for HBO’s fictional apocalypse miniseries. Really, the only downside so far is the actual global pandemic that blew up in the last three months, but maybe it’ll be over by the time this starts moving forward. Or maybe we’ll all turn into fungus zombies before the show gets made? Either way, we’re looking forward to it.
If you’d like to spoil the ending of this miniseries, we wrote about the end of The Last Of Us video game back in May. The endings will probably be the same, so… don’t click that link if don’t want it spoiled. Also, given the Chernobyl connection, what are the odds Jared Harris and Stellan Skarsgård play Joel and Ellie? Did everyone already make that joke back in March?