HBO releases first look at Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey in The Last Of Us
The pair star as Joel and Ellie in Craig Mazin's adaptation of the best-selling games
Craig Mazin’s adaptation of video game blockbuster The Last Of Us is now officially one step closer to proving its eventual existence, as HBO released the first image of the series today at Summer Game Fest. Said pic showed stars Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey as the game’s iconic main characters, Joel and Ellie.
And, yeah, fair enough: Both actors bear a resemblance to, at the very least, the vibe of the characters from the game, especially Pascal, who’s an old hand at this whole “keep a special child safe while the whole universe is apparently out to kill them” game, and who looks appropriately world weary as the hard-living Joel. (Ramsey, meanwhile, doesn’t look a whole lot like the games’ version of Ellie, but that glimpse of annoyed disdain on her face is certainly in line with the slowly defrosting relationship between the two survivors.)
The images from the series were shown as part of the hefty Last Of Us chunk at today’s Summer Game Fest. In addition to showing off the shot of fellow former Game Of Thrones stars Pascal and Ramsey, the event also saw the game series’ Neil Druckmann (who’s writing on, and directing an episode of, the HBO show, which is being show-run by Chernobyl’s Mazin) announce that the voice acting and motion capture stars of the games, Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson, would also appear in the show in some form.
The Last Of Us takes place in a version of America in which a fungal infection has turned large percentages of the human population into creatures that are zombies in all but name. The games center on Joel, a hardened survivor with a familiarity with violence, and Ellie, the teenage girl he’s tasked with transporting across the ravaged United States. The games have been both critical and commercial darlings; word of a PlayStation 5 remake of the original game was leaked online earlier today.
The Last Of Us TV show is set to wrap filming on its first season this month; the show will debut on HBO some time in 2023.