Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann On Why The Last Of Us Movie Didn't Happen

Before HBO announced its The Last of Us TV show, Sony's movie studio division was working on a film adaptation of the game. It never happened, and now writer-director of the games, Neil Druckmann, has shared some thoughts about why that might be.

He said on the Script Apart podcast that The Last of Us movie was envisioned with having a lot of big set pieces, but this didn't match up with what made sense.

"When I worked on the movie version, a lot of the thinking and notes were like, 'How do we make it bigger? How do we make the set pieces bigger?' It didn't work for The Last of Us and I think that's ultimately why the movie wasn't made," Druckmann said, as relayed by IGN.

He went on to say that for The Last of Us the game, the team approached it like it was an indie film that felt "small and intimate." This spirit is being carried forward on the upcoming The Last of Us TV show for HBO, Druckmann said.

"With the show we get to lean into that even more because we don't have to have as many action sequences as we do in the game," he said.

For The Last of Us the game, the action sequences were purposefully designed in part to teach players how to perform combat. But this doesn't apply to the TV show.

"You can throw all that out [for the TV show], because now we're in a different medium. Let's play to the strengths of this medium," he said.

Druckmann is writing on HBO's The Last of Us TV show with Chernobyl's Craig Mazin. Pedro Pascal plays Joel and Bella Ramsey is set to portray Ellie in the upcoming series, which is reportedly set to start filming soon in Canada.

In the same podcast episode, Druckmann spoke about Naughty Dog's ideas for The Last of Us Part III, but he said he's not sure if the studio will make the game.

In other news, it's been reported that Naughty Dog is currently working on a The Last of Us remake for PlayStation 5.