With less than three weeks to go until HBO's The Last Of Us premieres on January 15, more information about what to expect from the show has been making it out into the wild. A lot of info about the bumpy road to the show becoming a reality has also been revealed, including the failed attempt to turn the original The Last Of Us game into a movie just a year after it launched.
Revealed via a new report in The New Yorker, the first attempt to translate The Last Of Us into a new medium happened all the way back in 2014. Sony subsidiary Screen Gems, perhaps best known for the original Resident Evil movies, had the rights, but what the studio wanted to do with those rights is ultimately what led to a Last Of Us movie never happening.
While the evidence that HBO's adaptation is faithful to the source material is there for all to see already, Screen Gems wasn't happy with simply turning the game into a like-for-like movie. Spider-Man director Sam Raimi was attached to the project, and although Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann respected his work, The Last Of Us creator wasn't happy with what Screen Gems executives wanted from the movie.
While Druckmann was thinking of something along the lines of No Country For Old Men, the movie studio he was about to collaborate with was thinking more World War Z. Apparently the want for the movie version of the game to be “sexier” than the original was thrown around. Not exactly what Druckmann, nor many other people who played the game, would want to hear about a project in which the main characters are a 14-year-old girl and her adopted father figure.
Druckmann and Naughty Dog ultimately didn't let the adaptation happen, of course. However, in the process of making sure the movie didn't happen, Druckmann was introduced to Craig Mazin. Mazin was the key to the game being turned into a TV show and wrote the script for the adaptation alongside Druckmann. Mazin recently revealed he and Druckmann auditioned more than 100 people for the role of Ellie before choosing Bella Ramsey.