The Last of Us season 2 will start production in early 2024
By Daniel Roman
Apparently HBO is celebrating Christmas in November, because man are they dropping the updates today. HBO boss Casey Bloys held a press conference to talk up the network’s upcoming projects; already we’ve gotten the exciting news that House of the Dragon season 2 will premiere in early summer 2024. Members of the press who were at the event were even treated to an exclusive trailer for the series, though they were then sworn to secrecy. I don’t envy them needing to keep quiet about what they saw, like Ned Stark returning from the Tower of Joy.
House of the Dragon wasn’t the only show to get some love. Bloys also provided an update on the highly-anticipated second season of The Last of Us. According to Variety, the second season of HBO’s apocalyptic drama is tentatively slated to begin production in early 2024!
The Last of Us will start production in early 2024 (hopefully)
Generally, this is really exciting news. The Last of Us was one of many shows that was put on hold due to the ongoing Hollywood strikes; season 2 hadn’t yet been written when the writers strike hit. Casting was also halted due to the actors strike.
This provided some specific challenges for The Last of Us, because it had just come off a first season that was a massive hit and everyone was ready to dive straight into the follow-up. “We were able to map out all of Season 2,” co-showrunner Craig Mazin told Entertainment Weekly around the time the strikes began. “And I also wrote and submitted the script for the first episode and sent it in [to HBO] around 10:30 or 10:40 p.m. right before the midnight the [WGA] strike began. I think it’s becoming essentially a near certainty that we won’t be able to start [filming] when we were hoping to start, which is upsetting. We are all raring to go.”
The Last of Us is based on the beloved video game series by Naughty Dog, with both Mazin and The Last of Us game creator Neil Druckmann serving as showrunners. It follows a smuggler named Joel (Pedro Pascal) as he escorts a precocious young girl named Ellie (Bella Ramsey) across a post-apocalyptic United States which has been ravaged by a fungal zombie plague. The second season is set to adapt a large chunk of the second game, The Last of Us Part II, although it will likely take more than one season to adapt that game. There’s a lot of gas left in the tank on this show, so we’re very much looking forward to seeing more.
The big hitch to all this is that as of this writing is that, although the writers strike is over, the actors guild SAG-AFTRA is still on strike. They have been engaged in negotiations with the studios of the AMPTP for the past few weeks, so hopefully the end is in sight. Maybe Bloys knows something we don’t if he’s announcing something like The Last of Us will begin filming when it still hasn’t cast a lot of major new roles for season 2? We can hope!
The Last of Us season 2 wasn’t featured in HBO’s sizzle reel of shows premiering in 2024 at the press conference, so expect to see it in 2025.
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