The rather excellent Murray Bartlett has let slip that Parks & Rec star Nick Offerman will be featured HBO’s upcoming adaption of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us. Bartlett was talking to The Guardian about various roles he has had over the past few years and was asked about The Last of Us.
“It’s co-created by Craig Mazin, who did Chernobyl,” said Murray. “The scripts he’s written blew my head off. It’s an epic show, but beautifully human and intimate. We filmed it in Calgary. A lot of my scenes are with Nick Offerman. Playing off him was awesome.”
HBO have not officially announced the casting of Offerman so we do not know who he will be playing but he would make a perfect Bill, the survivalist Joel and Ellie meet. However, it had been previously announced that Con O’Neill was playing that character, with Bartlett as his partner Frank, a character who is only referenced in the games.
Earlier this year celebrate The Last of Us Day (previously known as Outbreak Day) the Naughty Dog team have released the first image from The Last of Us tv series. Rather cunningly they used the same over the shoulder view found in the game to make the image look like it has been lifted from The Last of Us.
As you can see Joel and Ellie look very similar to the characters found in the game, at least from the back where we can see their backpacks. Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckman, who is working on the TV show, tweeted “When I first saw them on set in full costume, I was like: “Hooooooly shit! It’s Joel & Ellie!!”
It was in March 2020 when Naughty Dog and HBO confirmed that a series based on The Last of Us would be created. Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann and Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin are working together to adapt the game for TV audiences.
Kantemir Balagov will be directing The Last of Us’ HBO pilot. His may not be a familiar name but he has had some success with his other projects. They include the Russian movie Beanpol, set in Leningrad during the year 1945. The city is in ruins and amongst it two women try to find their way, an near enough apocalyptic scenario and the aftermath of it and thematically similar in some ways to The Last of Us.
Pedro Pascal made my day!! pic.twitter.com/sLuImvnFHg
— Donica (@donicache) November 27, 2021
Source: The Guardian
MrYd
But TLoU is a serious adult thing! You can’t go putting Ron Swanson into it, no matter how good he was in Parks and Recreation.
On the other hand, he was very good in Devs last year. Although I’m not sure many people saw that series. Or got past the confusing science stuff. (It was probably about as good an attempt at getting all that quantum stuff right as you could manage. And if it didn’t make sense, that’s the universe’s fault, not the writer)
And Chernobyl also managed to get a decent performance out of someone best known for a comedy role too.
The bigger worry is if they do a story as good as the first game, or as terrible as the second.