The Last of Us (film) (2024)

The Last of Us was a cancelled live-action adventure film adaptation of the video game of the same name. The film was announced in March 2014 and entered development hell until it was officially cancelled in 2020 in favor of a television series by HBO. It was planned to be written by Neil Druckmann and produced by Sam Raimi.^[1]

Development[]

On November 25, 2013, two domain names, registered by Sony, suggested a film adaptation of The Last of Us video game might be made.^[2]

On March 6, 2014, it was announced that a film of The Last of Us would be made and distributed by Screen Gems. Naughty Dog co-presidents Evan Wells and Christophe Balestra, game director Bruce Straley, creative director and writer Neil Druckmann, and American film director Sam Raimi would produce the film. Druckmann, who would write the film and its script, confirmed that the film would be based on the video game's storyline on March 13, 2014.^[3]

At Comic-Con 2014, Raimi shared that he and Druckmann had met with Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams to talk about her playing the role of Ellie.^[4]

After very little occurred for over two years, on April 4, 2016, game director Neil Druckmann said in an interview with IGN that the development for the film hadn't progressed in over a year. He explained, "I know I said in an interview a while back we had a table read, got the script to a good place and it kind of entered development hell like these things tend to do. There hasn't been any work done on it in over a year and a half."^[5][6] In November of the same year, Raimi stated that development of the film was at a standstill,^[7][8]

By February 2018, Druckmann personally admitted he had decided against making a film adaptation of the game, feeling it would be wrong for anyone to replace the original actors for the roles. Regardless, the film remained in development despite Druckmann's change of heart.^[9]

With the announcement of a television series adaptation for The Last of Us in March 2020, the film was considered to have ended development and was subsequently cancelled.^[1]

On February 12, 2023, Jeffrey Pierce mentioned how Screen Gems assembled a troupe of actors for a table read. The studio was developing a movie adaptation of The Last of Us with Druckmann, but from the original voice cast, he was the only one asked to read-through for the live-action part. Ultimately, it was scrapped because it was hard to condense the story into 1-2 hours.^[10]

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