Before the HBO series, The Last Of Us video game was to be adapted into a film by Sam Raimi. Why has this adaptation never seen the light of day?
Ten years after the release of the first video game The Last Of Us, fans are finally entitled to a live action adaptation. Signed Neil Druckmann (creator of the video game franchise) and Craig Mazin (Chernobyl), The Last Of Us is already a phenomenon after the broadcast of its first episode.
The pilot made a record start and was seen by 10 million American viewers in two days on the American channel HBO and the HBO Max platform. For their part, French fans can discover the series every week on Amazon Prime Video.
The public is won over by the series and seems to be ready to follow with emotion the journey of Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey), two survivors of a pandemic, who cross a post-apocalyptic America and ravaged by a virus originating from of a fungus and infecting humans.
The Last Of Us was originally supposed to be a Sam Raimi movie!
If fans seem thrilled with the series, you should know that they could have had a video game adaptation much earlier. As early as 2014, a film adaptation project of The Last Of Us was announced.
Green Gems studio was to develop the film. Although it is the same studio that produced Paul WS Anderson’s Resident Evil films, there was talk that The Last Of Us would be a more polished adaptation, thanks in particular to the creative team attached to the project.
This film was to be produced by the game’s creator and screenwriter, Neil Druckmann, Naughty Dog co-presidents Evan Wells and Christophe Balestra, and game director Bruce Straley. And a prestigious filmmaker was also to be the producer of the film The Last Of Us.
HBO
Sam Raimi, master of horror and director of the first Spider-Man trilogy, was to direct this project, for which Neil Druckmann rewrote a second version of the screenplay in 2015 in order to make it a true-to-spirit blockbuster. Game.
Only here, despite a talented creative team, the film adaptation of The Last Of Us is thrown in the trash due to artistic differences. In the columns of New YorkerNeil Druckmann explained that studio executives were pressing the crew to make the film’s action “bigger” and “sexiest“.
The game’s creator hoped for a plot akin to No Country for Old Men while Screen Gems hoped for a new World War Z. And then he felt overwhelmed with having to squeeze nearly fifteen hours of game narrative into one. only two-hour feature film. Following these disagreements, the project was therefore abandoned.
It will be necessary to wait until 2020 for Neil Druckmann to find another partner, in the person of Craig Mazin (Chernobyl), and a channel, HBO, to be able to implement the adaptation he has always dreamed of: a high-end series with a substantial budget centered on people and emotions.
Episodes of The Last Of Us are available weekly on Amazon Prime Video.