The Last Of Us is one of the greatest pieces of storytelling ever seen in a video game, which naturally makes it the perfect title for the adaptation gods to put their grubby fingers all over it. Well folks, it seems like a Last Of Us live-action adaptation is indeed happening whether you like it or not and it… might actually be good?
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According to The Hollywood Reporter, HBO is teaming up with acclaimed video game studio Naughty Dog to adapt The Last Of Us to a series. For those who may not be aware of what this game is, The Last Of Us is set in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity is trying to survive a deadly fungi infection and revolves around Joel, a hardened survivor, trying to smuggle a 14-year-old girl, Ellie, across the U.S. as part of a dangerous mission.
Having HBO onboard the project is a win in of itself already but what really tips the adaptation into the “this is gonna be good” territory is the behind-the-scenes talent.
The original writer and creative director of The Last Of Us, Neil Druckmann, is deeply involved with the project and will work alongside Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin in doing this adaptation justice. Even with the track record of “meh” video game film and TV adaptations, this bodes well already.
This is all good news so far as HBO has had a great track record for adapting existing IPs and a series is a far better way of retelling The Last Of Us than the proposed movie that was announced back in 2014.
As for how the HBO series will approach the project, it is reported that it will be an adaptation of the events in the first game, which means we’ll see lead characters Joel and Ellie be brought to life. With that in mind, we have one simple request for this Last Of Us HBO series: cast Logan-era Hugh Jackman as Joel.
To present our argument, here’s Joel from The Last Of Us:
And here’s Logan-era Hugh Jackman:
Come on, Hugh Jackman IS Joel for this Last Of Us adaptation so just cast him right now, HBO and Naughty Dog. Don’t be cowards on this, you know it’s perfect. In fact, they might as well cast Dafne Keen as Ellie because, well, both she and Hugh have already had a warm up as Ellie and Joel already in Logan.
It’ll be quite some time before we see this hypothetical Hugh Jackman-starring HBO adaptation of The Last Of Us but we’re willing to wait as long as it takes as long as Hugh is onboard. In the meantime, we’ll just have to make do with The Last Of Us II.
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