Because of this, HBO’s “The Last of Us” was almost canceled permanently

The story of ‘The Last of Us’ has had a number of failed attempts to adapt to the big screen. Sam Raimi, director of the ‘Spiderman’ trilogy, also tried to make a film, but due to creative differences with Sony, the project was shelved. However, there was another reason the HBO series was nearly cancelled, and the story of Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey would take another turn.

The creators of ‘The Last of Us’ put the HBO series at risk. For his part, Neil Druckmann, director of the video game Naughty Dog, and on the other Craig Mazin, showrunner of the adaptation, who has already worked on “Chenobyl”. Both were unaware of each other’s work, which, being artists from entirely different media, was to be expected.

During pre-production of the HBO series, Neil Druckmann and his team were looking for the television studio that would make the adaptation. It was there that they came up with the Craig Mazin name. In an interview for The New Yorker, Druckmann explained that “let it go” to the showrunner of ‘The Last of Us’, because I just “didn’t know who it was”.

The situation put at risk ‘The Last of Us’, and not finding the right name, the HBO series was almost cancelled. However, Druckmann and Mazin met and the two creatives felt a special bond when they discussed adapting the story of Joel and Ellie. It was then that the showrunner was never left out as he had the perfect pitch to push the project forward.

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Why was Craig Mazin cast in ‘The Last of Us’?

Seeing the work of Craig Mazin in “Chernobyl”, it was then that Neil Druckmann understood that the tone of one of the best and most important miniseries of recent years would fit perfectly into the story that Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey were about to tell. Both directors had found strengths in Joel and Ellie’s storyline, and it all started off on the right foot.

‘The Last of Us’ and ‘Chernobyl’ are set after a destructive event that claimed the lives of several people over the years. Thus the tone and pace of the series about the nuclear disaster in Ukraine resonates in the video game, which presents a world where the last humans try to survive an infection caused by a fungus that turns everyone into savages. .

This is how, little by little, ‘The Last of Us’ is canceled, or at least, transformed into an adaptation that bears no resemblance to the one already seen in the previews. In any case, it remains to wait a few more weeks to know the result of what Druckmann and Mazin conceived, on January 15, via HBO Max.