Johan Renck to direct HBO pilot for adaptation of post-apocalypse game 'The Last Of Us'

Johan Renck, the Emmy-winning director of the hit HBO miniseries Chernobyl, is re-teaming with the network to helm the pilot of the series adaptation of popular video game The Last of Us. Developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony, the video game hit the market in 2013 and received critical praise for its gripping post-apocalypse story. The upcoming series’ synopsis closely mirrors the original video game’s plot, which is widely beloved among gamers as one of the best post-apocalyptic stories in the medium in recent memory.

"It revolves around Joel, a smuggler in this new world, and Ellie, a teenager who may be key to a cure for a deadly pandemic. A hardened survivor, Joel is hired to smuggle Ellie out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey as they navigate America and depend on each other for survival." 

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Renck spoke to an international daily and discussed the complexities of adapting characters from the video game into television characters, given how well-fleshed out they were in the game. He revealed that the characters in the video game are well-known to people and he has been in the process of figuring out how to portray them. He said that dealing with a video game character is way further than a character from a book.

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Renck is also in negotiations to adapt John Fowles' cult novel 'The Magus' as miniseries. The Magus is set on a Greek island, where a British man Nicholas Urfe, a young English language teacher, finds himself caught in the mind games of the island's enigmatic owner. The book was previously adapted by Fowles himself in the late 1960s as a film, starring Anthony Quinn, Michael Caine and Candice Bergen.

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About the show

Neil Druckmann, writer and creative director of the game, will collaborate with Chernobyl scribe Craig Mazin to write and executive produce the series. Carolyn Strauss will also executive produce along with Renck and Evan Wells, president of Naughty Dog, the Santa Monica-based developer of the game. The project is a co-production with Sony Pictures Television in association with PlayStation Productions. It will be the first television series from PlayStation Productions.

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(with PTI inputs)