The story behind as to how HBO’s The Last of Us came to fruition was previously told by series co-creator and co-showrunner Neil Druckmann, in which a rejected film adaptation offer from Sony led Druckmann to eventually finding Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin in writing for a The Last of Us live-action TV series, instead. However, there was one other option the Naughty Dog video game had a chance to procure the game in.
Recently speaking with The Direct, original Tommy Miller voice actor Jeffrey Pierce (who appeared as Perry in the series) revealed that The Last of Us was almost adapted into an animated TV show: “There have been a couple of different iterations over time. There was a movie at one point. There was a motion-capture cinematic animated series at one point."
If The Last of Us had been developed as an animated adaptation, would it be as successful as the HBO show? No one knows, exactly, but an adaptation like Arcane did find universal critical acclaim on Netflix, which could have potentially brought more animated adaptations to life, including The Last of Us, at some point.
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An animated version would definitely bring more confidence within the industry in terms of developing video game stories despite its historical failure on adaptations. However, this doesn’t mean HBO’s live-action version didn’t bring anything to the table, either.
With the work of co-showrunners Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin, The Last of Us was brought to life, as promised to their game-accurate features and storyline, which overall brought The Witcher fans wishing HBO had adapted their show, too.
Not only has The Last of Us been a continuous streaming success, but Druckmann and Mazin’s process definitely filled in some gaps that fans were appreciative of and definitely made them look forward to The Last of Us Season 2. Still, would you have preferred The Last of Us as an animated series?
The Last of Us Episode 8 premieres this Sunday, March 5, 2023, on HBO Max.
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