While I would have been interested in an adaptation of The Last of Us in general, seeing that Craig Mazin is involved in the production raises my interest significantly. We learned back in March 2020 that Mazin is teaming with Neil Druckmann on adapting the Sony PS game franchise to a live-action series at HBO as a co-production with Sony Pictures Television and PlayStation Productions and then in November 2020 it got a series order without noting how many episodes it would be.
Now, a new bit of casting has surfaced that’s definitely welcome to see as Gabriel Luna has joined the production to play Tommy, Joel’s (Pascal) younger brother, a former soldier who hasn’t lost his sense of idealism and hope for a better world. Luna has had some solid projects with Agents of SHIELD and was supposed to get his own Ghost Rider series before the Disney/Fox deal brought that to a close. He’s previously been part of an HBO series with True Detective from its second season.
Our previous casting has definitely works well for the lead character of Ellie as the show will have Bella Ramsey taking on the role. She’s “best” known as Lyanna Mormont from Game of Thrones, the young leader who delighted many viewers. In addition to that, Pedro Pascal has joined the production to take on the role of Joel, who is hired to smuggle Ellie out of the quarantine zone. With Pascal having a sizable role on Game of Thrones as well as Oberyn Martell that really put his face and name in front a lot of people, it’s a really solid piece of casting.
This role doesn’t impact his work on The Mandalorian due to how that series is filmed and a lot of it being voiceover work.
The plan is for the series to cover the original game as conceived by Druckmann and some of the elements from the second game that may make sense. Mazin received a lot of critical acclaim for bringing out the five-episode Chernobyl series and it’s easy to imagine this as a smart paring for an end of the world storyline.
Plot Concept: The story takes place twenty years after modern civilization has been destroyed. Joel, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle Ellie, a 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.