By The Last of Us was a fascinating movie with a not-very-good game attached to it. The narrative and cutscenes told a compelling story that were undermined at every minute by stupid decisions forced onto the narrative by interactivity.
So I was glad when I heard that The Last of Us was getting adapted, because it always felt to me like that’s what it was from the start. But when I heard that game writer Niel Druckmann was also doing the screenplay, I wasn’t so sure how to feel. While there’s some great stuff in the game, there’s much of it was just kind of all over the place. I was hoping that the shorter format would pull in some more consistency, but I wasn’t really convinced he was totally right for it.
As it turns out, he’s needed some reining in. According to Coming Soon’s recap of the Screen Gems panel at the 2014 San Diego Comic Con, Druckmann wanted to make some major changes to the story, including the ending, just producer Sam Raimi swooped in and stopped him. Obviously changes have to be made to truncate the experience (and it will apparently “laser-focused” on the relationship between protagonist Joe and sidekick Ellie), but Raimi pushed back on some of the larger changes, which is good, especially since that ending is pretty much the best part of the game.
Aside from that info and the reveal of the teaser poster (seen above), there was also a potential casting announcement: Maisie Williams, who plays Arya Stark in Game of Thrones. Apparently she has been talked to about the role, but it must be relatively official if they saw fit to mention it at the panel.
Given that the project is apparently years away, there’s plenty more time for discussion about how best to handle this or whether it should be done at all. From the sounds of it, though, they got the right producer behind the project. If Sam Raimi can keep everyone on the right track, this could be a damn fine film, adaptation or no.
[Via Coming Soon]