‘The Last of Us’ TV Series Headed to HBO With ‘Chernobyl’ Creator and Game’s Original Writer

The Last of Us, the insanely popular video game that takes players across a post-apocalyptic United States, is becoming an HBO series. Craig Mazin, creator of HBO’s excellent and disturbing Chernobyl series, is working on the adaptation with Neil Druckmann, the writer and creative director of the game. Hollywood has been trying to adapt the game into a feature film since 2014, but an HBO series seems like a better fit at this point.

THR has the scoop on The Last of Us TV series, which is in the hands of Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann. Druckmann, who worked on the original game, will executive produce and write with Mazin. Carolyn Strauss, one of the executive producers of Game of Thrones, is also executive producing here. The Last of Us game was developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment, and first launched in 2013.

The game was a “tale of the post-apocalypse centered on the relationship between Joel, a smuggler in this new world, and Ellie, a teenager who may be a key to a cure for the deadly pandemic…Joel, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle the 14-year-old girl out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey, as they both must traverse across the U.S. and depend on each other for survival.” The game was met with widespread acclaim and became one of the best-selling video games of all time. There’s also a sequel due to arrive this year. The HBO series will adapt the events of the first game.

“Neil Druckmann is without question the finest storyteller working in the video game medium, and The Last of Us is his magnum opus,” said Mazin. “Getting a chance to adapt this breathtaking work of art has been a dream of mine for years, and I’m so honored to do it in partnership with Neil.”

Druckmann added: “From the first time I sat down to talk with Craig I was equally blown away by his approach to narrative and his love and deep understanding of The Last of Us. With Chernobyl, Craig and HBO created a tense, harrowing, emotional masterpiece. I couldn’t think of better partners to bring the story of The Last of Us to life as a television show.”

In 2014, ScreenGems was set to make a Last of Us movie, with Druckmann writing and Sam Raimi producing. By 2016, though, the project was in development hell. Now, it lives again on HBO. The original game is dark and uncompromising, which seems like a good fit for Mazin, whose Chernobyl was unflinching in its depiction of the events surrounding the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant incident of 1986.

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