The Last of Us and its sequel, The Last of Us Part II, are a pair of very successful zombie video games available on PlayStation systems. They’re also so well-written that none other than HBO is adapting them for the screen, with Game of Thrones veterans Pedro Pascal (Oberyn Martell) and Bella Ramsey (Lyanna Mormont) signed on to play Joel and Ellie, the surrogate father-daughter combo who drives the narrative forward.
Essentially, the first Last of Us game follows Joel and Ellie as they cross a ruined, zombie-ridden United States in an attempt to get Ellie to a laboratory operated by the revolutionary militia group the Fireflies, all in the hope that they can find out what makes Ellie immune to the mutant fungus that has turned so many other people into shambling horrors.
The Fireflies are led by a woman named Marlene, voiced and motion captured in both games by Merle Dandridge. And now, The Hollywood Reporter confirms that Dandridge will reprise the role for the HBO show, this time in full live action.
J.J. Abrams is adapting Valve’s Portal for the big screen
In other video game news, J.J. Abrams is moving forward with an adaptation of the 2007 sci-fi video game Portal, where players make their way through an underground testing facility run by a famously sarcastic and possibly murderous AI named GLaDOS.
“We actually do have a script that’s being written for the Portal movie now at ,” Abrams said. “We’re really excited about the take and the pitch, so it feels like that thing’s finally on the rails … It’s got enormous potential for a lot of reasons, one of which is because of the limited narrative of the game, as ingeniously told as it is, the potential of it is so huge. It’s gonna be super fun.”
Between these announcements, it’s clear that Hollywood is taking video games more seriously as a source of material. I think we’ll see a lot more of this kind of thing in the years to come.
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