Creatives behind The Last of Us tell why TV was the best choice for adapting the video game

The Last of Us is about to hit our televisions. January 15 will be an important date for many fans of Naughty Dog's franchise, with this series's premiere on HBO. Although we live in a time when it is already more common to see good results from video game adaptations to other media, there is always uncertainty about what we will end up watching and how the original material is respected.

Neil Druckmann, director of the original game and producer of the series, as well as Craig Mazin, producer and screenwriter, knew that producing this series would be a real feat. In an interview, they talked about some of the details of the adaptation of this award-winning video game and some of the challenges -and satisfactions- they had along the way.

From video game (to almost a movie) to TV series

A common practice among video games is for them to be adapted into a movie version. It's something we've seen since the early 90s, and while sometimes it was adapting games with a fairly simplistic story, The Last of Us puts itself on the opposite side, having one of the deepest stories in the industry.

Druckmann comments that his plan from the beginning was to bring The Last of Us to the big screen, however, he himself considers that he failed because he “foolishly believed that we could squeeze this experience into a two-hour movie but it failed." For his part, Mazin speaks that the video game "is already divided into chapters" helping a television narrative as opposed to a cinematic one.

“Movies can be gorgeous when the story is suited to them,” Mazin commented. For me, the joy of The Last of Us is not only the time spent with the characters but also the way episodes occur. The game is already broken into episodes. Sometimes, we shortened things as we adapted it and sometimes we expanded them dramatically. We found the way to tell the story exactly as it was supposed to be told. That flexibility exists in television and the opposite of that flexibility exists in movies. Movies are still an incredibly rigid form where you are required to land between 80 minutes and three hours.”

“I first went down a very bad road trying to make it as a movie,” Druckmann recounted. “ I foolishly believed that we could squeeze this experience into a two-hour movie but it failed. So I thought it could be a TV show. But there was some resistance to that because it’s only relatively recently that the best writing happens for TV. This is a golden age of TV storytelling. But I didn’t really pursue it until I met Craig and saw the potential for this partnership.”

Full screen

New details

Within the expanding Mazin mentions, there also comes the opportunity to include details, characters, or scenarios that were no longer part of the original game. Neil saw the opportunity to add "story ideas that you think are dead" to the program, while in the adaptation process, Mazin found opportunities to create his own answers.

“I can’t say too much but there is something quite significant that was written after we’d finished the first game,” mentioned Druckmann. “ It was meant to be an animated short, like a marketing piece, but that fell apart. It shows that sometimes story ideas that you think are dead can come back to life. When I talked to Craig about it, his eyes widened and he said, ‘That has to be in the show.’”

“When we talked about these things, I asked a lot of pesky questions because as you experience something as a player you just take it all in,” told Craig. “Now, doing an adaptation, I had to ask why this happened and why are they there and why did they do this. About 75 percent of the time Neil had the answer. And, about 25 percent of the time, there was no answer and we would make our way to one. This started to fill things out and color in some areas where we would be looking but that the game did not. For people who have played the game many times in all its many versions, and who know it beat by beat, there are so many things in the series that will be new for them.”

The Last of Us in a new media

The series is about to arrive, and this means that the game will take a new step into another format. Neil is confident that, although "it's hard to predict success" he is "incredibly proud of this".

“I entered this deal with a lot of trepidation and some fear that this could end badly,” said Druckmann. “There could be bad version of this, or it could be something I’m not proud of. It’s hard to predict success because it’s out of hands our now with how many people watch it and how they react to it. But having seen the love everyone poured into it, I’m incredibly proud of this, just as proud as when we made the game. It feels very special. And even if it fails — and I don’t think it will — I wouldn’t change anything about it.”

Recently, the creatives and cast talked more about the adaptation process and why fans shouldn't worry.

The Last of Us is coming to HBO on January 15.