The Last of Us is HBO’s latest adaptation and this time instead of a book the network has gone with a game. The game developed by Naughty Dog of the same name was published by Sony Entertainment in 2013 and since then has various spawned various sequels and spin-offs. The popularity of the game is insane and it is all thanks to the amazing narrative that it follows. The game has an extremely engaging premise and set of characters that makes it a good choice for adaptation especially from a network like HBO. The network understands the quality of the material and hence has assembled an extremely capable creative team to get the story on the big screen. Craig Mazin who made Chernobyl and won multiple Emmys for it is the co-creator of the series.
Seeing that Chernobyl also had outbreak of sorts at its center the series can be similar to it in treatment. Honestly, if the series is anything like Chernobyl, I’m already in love with it. The other co-creator of the series is the game creator Neil Druckmann. This is a lethal combination. It looks like HBO is very serious about this project and it doesn’t want to leave any stone unturned. This is not only reflected because of the creative team but also in the budget of the series.
The Last of Us’ Budget is Staggering!
A new article from The New Yorker has revealed the amount of faith that HBO has in its upcoming series. The budget of Last of Us each episode is reportedly more expensive Season 5 of Game of Thrones. Of course the show also casts two actors in the lead that were involved in Game of Thrones like Ramsey and Pascal. So by that logic, we can find the budget of the Last of Us. As per TV Guide, each episode of the 5th season of the highly popular fantasy series Game of Thrones was around $6-8 Million.
This means that the entire season totalled somewhere at $60-80 Million. So, we know that the first season of Last of Us is at least exceeding that number. These figures also supports what Damian Petti, President of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 212 union in Canada had said in July 2021. The figures he’d mentioned were that the HBO show was costing more than $10 Million to make per episode. Which means that the budget of the show is at least $90 Million. These figures aren’t official of course.
Considering all the information that we have, these figures are similar to budget of the other big video game adaptations like Netflix’s The Witcher and Paramount’s Halo. Also, the specific mention of Game of Thrones Season 5 confirms that the series won’t cross the $15 Million per episode threshold that Game of Thrones Season 6 had. The budget reflects the faith HBO has in the series as the network is comfortable sanctioning a Season 5 level budget for the debut of the show.
$10-15 Million per episode is a respectable budget for any TV show and fans should be elated to see that their favorite video game is being adapted at such production value. However, this budget is nothing in comparison to the most expensive show of all time i.e., Amazon Prime’s Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power which had a budget of $58 Million per episode and the entire season costed $465 Million to make. I only wish the writing quality of the series was better. We already know that the pilot of the Last of Us is very long clocking in at 74 minutes.
Pedro Pascal leads the cast of The Last of Us as Joel, a smuggler hired to deliver Bella Ramsey’s Ellie, a teenager immune to the Cordyceps brain infection that has wiped out the world, to a group of survivors working to manufacture a cure. Alongside Pascal and Ramsey, the cast for HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation includes Gabriel Luna, Merle Dandridge, Jeffrey Pierce, Anna Torv, Nico Parker, Murray Bartlett, Nick Offerman and Storm Reid.
The Last of Us will start streaming on HBO Max from January 15th 2023, each new episode would release every week.
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