In a tweet today, Naughty Dog announced that the much-anticipated TV adaptation of their well-loved The Last Of Us Games would premiere January 15th 2023 on HBO.
You have no idea what loss is. #TheLastofUs premieres January 15 on @HBO @hbomax #TLOU pic.twitter.com/qzxNH09vvK
— Naughty Dog (@Naughty_Dog) November 2, 2022
The first season will consist of nine episodes, written by the games’ writer-director Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin, creator of Chernobyl, which wasn’t strictly the same kind of post-apocalyptic setting but came awfully close.
Information has been trickling out piecemeal since the show was first announced in 2020: as we learned in early 2021, leads Joel and Ellie are to be played by Pedro ‘The Mandalorian’ Pascal and Bella ‘Lyanna Mormont’ Ramsey respectively. We now also know it will star Gabriel Luna as Joel’s younger brother Tommy, Merle Dandridge reprising her role from the games as resistance leader Marlene, and Anna Torv as Joel’s smuggler partner Tess. Behind the camera, Gustavo Santaolalla is also returning to provide the score.
The show, a joint production of Sony Pictures Television, PlayStation Productions, Naughty Dog, The Mighty Mint, and Word Games (to give some idea of the kind of clout behind it), is HBO’s first original show to be based on a video game – once a badge of straight-to-videoness in screen media, and honestly still not exactly a great selling point, despite the occasional success story like The Witcher.
This presents the show a real knife-edge to walk, particularly given the furious fan response to The Last Of Us Part II. Anything other than a one-to-one recreation of the action of the first game, which makes you the viewer win things by watching, will manage to infuriate at least someone. However, as a game The Last Of Us is more natural televisual raw material than, say, Tetris – it was nigh-universally praised for its storytelling and characterisation, and Mazin has previously described it as “the Lawrence of Arabia of video game narratives” in an effort to present an analogy greybearded HBO execs might understand.
READ MORE: The Last of Us Part II’s Ending Used To Be Very Different — And Better
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