The guy who directed Chernobyl will direct HBO’s The Last of Us show

Video game movies don’t have a great reputation, starting way when with the Super Mario Bros. movie through the dark reign of Uwe Boll and beyond; only very recently have movies like Detective Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog been anywhere close to watchable, and even those movies, fun as they are, don’t aim too high.

But HBO’s upcoming adaptation of Sony’s The Last of Us could change things. The 2013 game is already critically acclaimed for its story, which follows grizzled survivor Joel and 14-year-old Ellie as they trek across a United States devastated by a plague that turns humans into mindless zombies (admittedly, the idea seemed less immediately scary before COVID-19). Yes, it’s yet another zombie apocalypse story, but it’s one told with heart, craft and imagination.

HBO has assembled a high-powered team to bring it to the screen. First, there’s Neil Druckmann, the writer and creative director for the original game as well as its upcoming sequel. Then there’s Craig Mazin, who created Chernobyl, a harrowing HBO miniseries about the causes and aftereffects of a real-life near-apocalyptic disaster story. If you want to make a video game TV show people will take seriously, these are the people you get.

And it gets better. The Hollywood Reporter has it that Chernobyl director Johan Renck, who won an Emmy for his work on that show, is coming aboard to direct the pilot for The Last of Us. This is shaping up to be the bleakest, most down-to-earth video game adaptation ever, and I’m all for it.

I think Hollywood has gotten to the point where storytellers are willing to take video games seriously, in part because the people working on the adaptations have actually played video games themselves. We weren’t ready for a show like The Last of Us before, but we are now.

Of course, it’ll probably be a while before we actually see it, what with Hollywood still crawling back from the coronavirus pandemic. Hopefully by then the notion of a deadly plague wiping out much of the world won’t seem so relatable? In the meantime, The Last of Us Part 2 comes out on June 19.

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h/t The A.V. Club