Creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin clarified that they’re sticking with the main story from the original games and only that in The Last of Us.
Ahead of the highly anticipated season premiere of The last of us on HBO, certain big questions continue to swirl around anxious fans, especially in terms of how the cast will carry the considerable weight of the characters they play and especially how the directors choose to play out the story as a whole. Fortunately, according to a report by IndieWireco-creators Neil Druckmann and Chernobyl showrunner Craig Mazin has assured audiences that they will remain fiercely loyal to the source content and not stray into original, off-base ideas.
Druckmann, the current co-president of game developer Naughty Dog, who also worked extensively on the original games, clarified that despite recent very quiet rumors about a possible third installment in The last of us game franchise, they would deviate absolutely nowhere beyond the narrative scope of the first two released games.
“We have no plans to tell stories other than tweaking the games… We won’t run into the same problem as ‘Game of Thrones’ since ‘Part II’ [of the game series] doesn’t end on a cliffhanger.”
With this, Druckmann alludes to the deep creative conflicts that arose at one point with HBO’s benchmark fantasy show, Game of Thrones. By the time the show’s fifth season was due to arrive, author George RR Martin had yet to finish the next book in the series (and still hasn’t), and show directors David Benioff and DB Weiss took it upon themselves to write the rest. of the story, for better or worse. Unfortunately, Martin revealed that instead of at least involving him in that creative process, Benioff and Weiss completely removed him from every subsequent season until the very end. This inevitably led to one of the most controversial endings in television history, drawing massive protests from fans everywhere. Druckmann and Mazin clearly do not want to follow the same path of error and will not try to add anything original to their source material.
How The Last of Us will play out its story on screen
With their promise to stick with cemented material, Druckmann and Mazin have also noted that the show currently only runs for two seasons, with the first intended to cover all of the first game and the second season to cover all of the second game.. With an ever-growing whirlwind of strong fan opinions on how best to play out the story as a whole, some will agree that sticking to a strict and concise two seasons is the best idea, while others will lament the lack of enough time allocated for careful character development and world exploration in a story that is close to so many hearts. However, Druckmann has also made sure that their project will focus heavily on the story between each character and that the experience will stay more on the human side rather than towards an action-packed blockbuster like the resident evil movie series.
The first season of The last of us premieres January 15 at 8 p.m. CST on HBO and HBO Max.