Chernobyl director Johan Renck is set to team up with the show's creator, Craig Mazin, for HBO's upcoming adaptation of hit PlayStation video game The Last of Us. He helmed five episode of that series, while also serving as an executive producer, so this collaboration isn't a huge surprise.
Mazin is set to serve as showrunner on The Last of Us, and during an interview with Discussing Film, Renck confirmed that he will be both an executive producer and the director of the pilot episode.
"I’m an executive producer on it and attached to it," he said. "It’s an ongoing TV series. So that’s not something that I will be able to take on to that extent, but I’m part of that series and I will be directing at least the pilot. Then we’ll see how it goes on further. I mean, both Craig and I, we are working with each other again and we will work with each other on other things because we like each other."
Renck also addressed the challenges which come with adapting a video game. "You have for instance The Last of Us with Craig, in which you have a video game character who’s very much top of mind with anybody who’s ever played that game. More than that, they know exactly what he looks like, how he talks, how he acts, and so on and so forth."
"So with the The Last of Us, this is something that we’re discussing. We’re having weekly calls, Craig and I and also Neil [Druckmann] who created the game, about various approaches and how to deal with that. How to deal with the fact that a video game character is way further than a character from a book. But also it’s more different to deal with than a real person."
"This is something that we spent a lot of time talking about here and in the early development stages of this process," he added. "There are a lot of things to take into consideration and a lot of decisions and choices to be made in various ways without saying anything more about it."
It definitely sounds like The Last of Us is in safe hands with this duo, and a TV show feels like a much better option for the property than a movie. After all, there are a lot of ways the Naughty Dog title can be fleshed out for the small screen, and it will now be fun seeing how the cast comes together.