‘The Last Of Us’: How A Video Game Was Made Into An HBO Hit, And Why Writers Made That Romantic Pivot In Episode 3 – Deadline FYC House + HBO Max

deadline.com:

Please note: the screening and panel took place on April 28, before the start of the WGA Strike. Once he saw Chernobyl, Neil Druckmann decided it was time to have lunch with the writer behind the hit HBO limited series.

Druckmann had no ulterior motive in wanting to meet Craig Mazin other than to “gush” about the 2019 historical drama — that is, until they began to chat about The Last of Us action-adventure game, which Druckmann wrote in 2014. “He was a big fan of The Last of Us,” Druckmann recalled at April’s The Last of Us hosted by Deadline FYC House + HBO Max. “So then we started charting about it and in the conversation, I saw the love he had for the material in a way that I never felt with another person outside of Naughty Dog.” Within weeks, Mazin arranged for the two of them to meet with veteran producer Carolyn Strauss before pitching the adaptation to HBO. “She bought into the show and did this thing that now everybody does, which is like, ‘I’m not a gamer, don’t be offended,'” remembered Mazin. “I’m like, it’s okay.

You don’t have to be a gamer to enjoy this story.” And with that, The Last of Us was in production — and during a global pandemic, no less.

Fortunately, there was no concern about dramatizing a post-apocalyptic story during an already depressing time in our world’s history. “We were already in too deep by then,” Strauss remembered. “We just had to keep going.