The first two seasons of The Last of Us TV show had two showrunners behind the wheel: Craig Mazin, the guy behind the HBO his Chernobyl; and Neil Druckmann, the guy who spearheaded the first two Last of Us video games from Naughty Dog.
Now, Druckmann has revealed that he's stepping back from HBO's zombie drama. “I’ve made the difficult decision to step away from my creative involvement in ‘The Last of Us’ on HBO,” he said in a statement. “With work completed on Season 2 and before any meaningful work starts on Season 3, now is the right time for me to transition my complete focus to Naughty Dog and its future projects, including writing and directing our exciting next game, ‘Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet,’ along with my responsibilities as Studio Head and Head of Creative.”
"Co-creating the show has been a career highlight. It's been an honor to work alongside Craig Mazin to executive produce, direct and write on the last two seasons. I'm deeply thankful for the thoughtful approach and dedication the talented cast and crew took to adapting The Last of Us Part I and the continued adaptation of The Last of Us Part II."
Mazin also made a statement, per The Wrap. He reiterated his commitment to adapting the remainder of The Last of Us Part II: the second season only took us partway through that massive game, with the third (and probably the fourth) season set to wrap up the story.
“It’s been a creative dream to work with Neil and bring an adaptation of his brilliant work to life on HBO,” Mazin said. “I couldn’t have asked for a more generous creative partner. As a true fan of Naughty Dog and Neil’s work in video games, I’m beyond excited to play his next game. While he focuses on that, I’ll continue to work with our brilliant cast and crew to deliver the show our audience has come to expect. We are so grateful to Neil and Halley Gross for entrusting the incredible story of ‘The Last of Us’ Part II to us, and we’re just as grateful to the millions of people around the world who tune in.”
The second season focused on Ellie (Bella Ramsey) as she traveled to Seattle to hunt down and kill Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), who murdered her surrogate father Joel (Pedro Pascal). The third season will follow in the footsteps of the video game and shift focus to Abby, with Bella Ramsey not appearing nearly as much. I wonder if that lends any credence to the rumor that Ramsey may be cast as Kitty Pryde in an upcoming X-Men project; Ramsey will have some time during the filming of season 3.
We've gotten some mixed signals on when filming on The Last of Us season 3 might begin; we've heard it could start as early as this summer and as late as next year. We'll keep an eye on that. Meanwhile, like he said, Neil Druckmann will go back to work on a new video game at Naughty Dog: Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is a new sci-fi action-adventure game that has nothing to do with The Last of Us universe, much as many fans would like him to work on The Last of Us Part III. We'll keep an eye on that too.
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