The pilot episode of the HBO TV series adaptation of the popular video game The Last of Us was directed by Kantemir Balagov (Beanpole), and the game’s creative director Neil Druckmann has also directed at least one episode, with other previously announced directors including the show’s writer Craig Mazin (The Specials), Jasmila Zbanic (Quo vadis, Aida), and Peter Hoar (Doctor Who). Now the folks at ComicBook.com have gotten their hands on a production list that reveals the names of two more directors: Jeremy Webb and Liza Johnson.
Webb’s directing credits include episodes of The Umbrella Academy, Shadow and Bone, Altered Carbon, Treadstone, The Runaways, NOS4A2, The Punisher, Fear the Walking Dead, Doctor Who, and Merlin. Johnson has previously directed episodes of Physical, Dead to Me, What We Do in the Shadows, Silicon Valley, Barry, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and American Horror Story, as well as the films Elvis & Nixon and Hateship Loveship.
Ali Abbasi (Border) had been announced as a director on the show at one point, but it look like he had to step away from the project.
The Last of Us has a production schedule of twelve months, with every episode of the show sporting a budget that well exceeds eight figures.
The The Last of Us video game’s story is set
years after a fungal plague wiped out much of humanity, transforming most into vicious zombie-like monsters, the story follows Joel, who’s living in a militarized quarantine zone. He has a close relationship with Tess, who operates in the black market of this community. Together, they’ve become known by the local criminal underworld for their ruthlessness. On a mission to reclaim their stolen guns, they run into the leader of the Fireflies, a resistance group, who tasks them with smuggling a young girl named Ellie out of the zone. This mission soon becomes much more than they were prepared for.
The cast of HBO’s The Last of Us includes Pedro Pascal as Joel, who is “tormented by past trauma and failure. He must trek across a pandemic-ravaged America, all the while protecting a girl who represents the last hope of humanity”; Bella Ramsey as Ellie, “a 14-year-old orphan who has never known anything but a ravaged planet and who struggles to balance her instinct for anger and defiance with her need for connection and belonging… as well as the newfound reality that she may be the key to saving the world”; Anna Torv as Tess, “a smuggler and hardened survivor in a post-pandemic world”; Gabriel Luna as Joel’s brother Tommy, “a former soldier who hasn’t lost his sense of idealism and hope for a better world”; Merle Dandridge as Marlene, “the head of the Fireflies, a resistance movement struggling for freedom against an oppressive military regime”; Nico Parker as Joel’s daughter Sarah; Jeffrey Pierce as Perry, “a rebel in a quarantine zone”; Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett as Bill and Frank, “two post-pandemic survivalists living alone in their own isolated town”; and Storm Reid as Ellie’s best friend Riley.
The Last of Us is a co-production with Sony Pictures Television, PlayStation Productions, Word Games, The Mighty Mint, and game developer Naughty Dog. Druckmann serves as executive producer alongside Carolyn Strauss, Naughty Dog’s Evan Wells, Asad Qizilbash and Carter Swan of PlayStation Productions, and Mazin.