HBO's upcoming live-action adaptation of The Last Of Us will adapt the 2013 PlayStation game of the same name, it has been confirmed. If you've been following the development of the show you probably already knew this, but executive producer and game creator Neil Druckmann has shed a little more light on the project, revealing that the show will, at times, "deviate greatly" from the source material.
In a wide-ranging interview with IGN, Druckmann confirmed that much of The Last Of Us will be a straight retelling of the original game, in which Joel must smuggle Ellie across the country in an attempt to find a cure for the virus that has ravaged America. But while there'll be plenty of similarities - including dialogue lifted straight from the game - expect some twists and turns along the way.
Druckmann explained that it was more important to nail "the philosophical underpinnings of the story" rather than mess around with questions such as whether a character "should wear the same plaid shirt or the same red shirt".
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"That's way less important to us than getting the core of who these people are and the core of their journey," he told IGN.
"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.
"For example, in the game, there's so much action you have to have to train the player about mechanics. You have to have more violence and more spectacle to some degree than you would need on a TV show because you don't need to train people on how to use a gun. So that's something that's been really different, and HBO's been great in pushing us to move away from hardcore action and focus more on the drama of the character. Some of my favourite episodes so far have deviated greatly from the story, and I can't wait for people to see them."
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Druckmann also teased that Clickers - the infected monsters that roam the world in The Last Of Us - are starting to come together for the show. He noted that he'd seen some early prosthetics and that they look "awesome". I'm assuming by that he means "utterly terrifying".
There's no release date for The Last Of Us yet, but we know that Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian) and Bella Ramsey (Game Of Thrones) have been cast as Joel and Ellie. That's a hell of a pairing, and I can't wait to see how this turns out.
Featured Image Credit: Sony/SPDRMNKYXXIIITopics: GAMING, News, HBO, PlayStation, Naughty Dog, The Last Of Us