First trailer for HBO’s Last Of Us adaptation introduces Joel, Ellie, and… “ominous clicking”

Naughty Dog’s The Last Of Us was a PlayStation 3 game that was met with so much critical and commercial acclaim that Sony put out a remastered version for PlayStation 4 and then a full remake for PlayStation 5, ensuring that people will always have easy access to The Last Of Us. But what about people who don’t have any kind of PlayStation? Well, HBO has them covered with its adaptation of The Last Of Us, written by Chernobyl’s Craig Mazin and Last Of Us’ game director Neil Druckmann, and it just got a new trailer today.

The trailer certainly appears faithful to the game, with Game Of Thrones breakout Pedro Pascal playing Joel (a sad man sadly surviving in the post-apocalypse) and Game Of Thrones breakout Bella Ramsey playing Ellie (an… important teenage girl). The basic plot of the first game, avoiding spoilers as much as possible, is that Joel has been tasked with transporting Ellie across the country in the midst of an ongoing outbreak of a fungal infection that—for lack of a better term—turns them into zombies. Actually, there is a better term for at least one variant of the zombies, and it’s playfully teased by this trailer if you have the captions on with “ominous clicking” showing up long before a Clicker makes a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance in the gross, mushroomy flesh.

In addition to the two main stars, The Last Of Us features Gabriel Luna as Tommy, Merle Dandridge as Marlene (reprising her role from the games!), Anna Torv as Tess, Nick Offerman as Bill, and Storm Reid as Riley. Voice actors Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson, who played Joel and Ellie in the games, will also make appearances of some sort. The show premieres at some point next year.