The Last of Us is a game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. It is an action-adventure game where the player controls a smuggler – Joel who has been tasked with escorting Ellie, a teenage girl. The setting of the game is a post-apocalyptic United States of America and is supposed to be played from a third-person perspective. The Last of Us was a huge success, to the point where there were quite a few sequels and spin-offs made and those too were highly successful. And now, we’re also getting a remake of The Last of Us for the next gen console – PS5. Considering the success of the game and the engaging story, HBO have taken up the job of developing a live action series based on this game. Fan are worried whether the adaptation properly honors the source material?
This is risky business to be honest, when you touch something too valuable you often get burned. Just look at Amazon Prime’s LOTR Prequel. Although, that show got criticized for good reasons. Considering that HBO is making the adaptation, I was not worried. I have faith in HBO’s creative team that they’ll only ruin the last season of the show. Jokes apart, but HBO really is one of the better networks for such a show and they proved it by releasing a trailer for the show that looks absolutely gripping. That being said, the runtime of the pilot has been leaked which tells us that HBO is almost giving us a feature film for the first episode of the series.
The Last of Us: Pilot is as long as a Feature Film!
YouTuber @DomTheBombYT revealed that the HBO show- The Last of Us’ pilot has been revealed in a recent listing. The listing also confirmed that the show belongs to the Horror, Drama, History, Sci-Fi and Action genre. Basically it is a marriage between all these genres. Another important detail revealed in the listing is that the show will be TV-MA rated. Which is basically a R-Rating for TV. The runtime revealed for the show’s pilot was 1 hour 25 minutes or 85 minutes long. This is almost the length of a feature film.
I mean Lights Out was just 1 hour 20 minutes. Regardless, long episodes is not a new thing anymore. Netflix’s Stranger Things has crossed all bounds of length in its latest season with its finale being up to 2 hours and 30 minutes. However, the difference between Stranger Things and The Last of Us is that Stranger Things humungous runtime came in its 4th season where the show already had a huge fanbase who’d watch it regardless of the length. The Last of Us’s hefty runtime comes in its first season but as it is a game’s adaptation, it too has a fanbase.
For comparison, here are the runtimes of popular HBO show premieres:
- House of the Dragon – 66 minutes
- The Nevers – 65 minutes
- Game of Thrones – 61 minutes
- True Detective -57 minutes
- Euphoria – 53 minutes
- The White Lotus – 51 minutes
The creative team of the show behind the camera is extremely talented, someone you can invest your trust in. For instance, 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.
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.
Check out the full Trailer of The Last of Us on YouTube:
The Last of Us will start streaming on HBO Max from Early 2023 and doesn’t have an official release date yet.
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