In 2014 Sony officially announced a feature film based on the PlayStation 3 hit game The Last of Us. As it is well known, The Last of Us movie ultimately failed and Neil Druckmann recently went into the reasons for the failure of the movie version.
In the last issue of the Script Apart podcast, Naughty Dog’s co-president Neil Druckmann recently spoke about a story draft for a potential The Last of Us Part 3. In addition, he also commented on the failed movie adaptation of the franchise and what the upcoming HBO series should do better.
As early as 2014, Sony confirmed a screen implementation of Joel and Ellie’s adventure, in which Neil Druckmann also worked as a screenwriter and Sam Raimi (Spider-Man) as a producer. A year later he had submitted a second version of the script for the video game adaptation, but work on the project never really progressed.
Ultimately, it became very quiet about the planned The Last of Us movie adaptation until Sony had completely stopped production last year. Druckmann now revealed why the movie failed. According to his remarks, many of his comments were about showing individual facets of the template for the canvas on a larger scale: “How do we make it bigger? How do we make the set pieces bigger?”
Although he does not name this, he states that this approach made The Last of Us movie to fail in the end. According to Druckmann, “it didn’t work for The Last of Us and I think that’s ultimately why the movie wasn’t made.” However, those in charge have learned their lessons from the project, which is why the upcoming TV series will be closer to the game.
The makers, therefore, approached The Last of Us series like an indie film and not like an action blockbuster. This approach, as well as the way the series will be shot, should feel “small and intimate.” “And with the show, we get to lean into that even more because we don’t have to have as many action sequences as we do in the game,” Druckmann concluded.
The HBO TV version of The Last of Us will reportedly start filming in July 2021.
