There Were Talks Of A Last Of Us Animated Series, Actor Says

HBO's The Last of Us actor Jeffrey Pierce--who also acted in the video game series--has revealed that there were discussions about making the video game adaptation an animated series.

During a recent Entertainment Weekly interview, Pierce--who played Joel's brother Tommy in the game and a rebel soldier named Perry in the show--discussed the process of bringing the story to life for television and how he was asked to do a table read.

Pierce went on to share his thoughts on the idea of The Last of Us movie, which was rumored early on but never saw the light of day, saying that he didn't think it would've worked given its runtime. The actor went on to reveal that there were even discussions about making the adaptation an animated series with motion capture before HBO picked it up.

"As good as it was, it was never gonna be a great movie," Pierce said. "In a two-hour runtime, how are you gonna tell 14, 17 hours of story? Then I think that there was some conversation about it maybe being an animation motion-capture movie series at some point, and that seemed like a good idea, but we've been down that road."

After the premiere of the series, The Last of Us director Neil Druckmann revealed that Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams and Booksmart's Kaitlyn Dever were both considered for the role of Ellie in the movie adaptation. However, the movie was canceled and by the time HBO acquired the series, both actors were too old to play the 14-year-old protagonist.