The Last Of Us Is Being Made Into a Movie

[Andy Chalk]

The Last Of Us Is Being Made Into a Movie

The live-action adaptation of The Last Of Us will be written by Neil Druckmann, the creative director on the hit PlayStation 3 game.

The Last Of Us has become the latest video game property slated for a move to the silver screen, as Deadline reports that Screen Gems has signed a distribution deal for a live-action film based on the game. Naughty Dog Creative Director Neil Druckmann is writing the script, while Druckmann, Naughty Dog Co-Presidents Evan Wells and Christophe Baelstra and Game Director Bruce Straley are "creative architects." The film will be produced by Ghost House Pictures, the production company founded by Sam Raimi and Robert Tappert.

"When I saw the quality of the storytelling, I knew the audience for this project was far greater than just the gaming community and that Neil Druckmann must write the screenplay," Screen Gems President Clint Culpepper said. "I am thrilled that SCEA's Riley Russell was able to get me in front of Neil and Evan Wells to plead my case. Sam and his team at Ghost House round out the perfect team to help realize Neil's vision."

"Since our game released last June, we've talked with many companies about making a film, but we couldn't have found better partners who share our creative vision and high standards," Wells said.

Screen Gems is part of Sony's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group and "focuses on films that fall between the wide-release movies traditionally developed and distributed by Columbia Pictures and those released by Sony Pictures Classics," according to the Sony Pictures Museum [http://www.sonypictures.com/corp/corporatefact.html#sg]. Recent films produced under the Screen Gems banner include the Resident Evil and Underworld movies, Legion, Priest, Friends With Benefits and the Carrie remake.

Source: Deadline [http://www.deadline.com/2014/03/screen-gems-takes-on-sony-playstation-vidgame-adaptation-the-last-of-us/]


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[Barbas]

Screen Gems is a most inappropriately-named company. None of this sounds particularly encouraging, actually. Does such a film even need to be made?

 

[Tanis]

Ellen Page is Ellen Page in Ellen Page Fights Zombies.
???

 

[WashAran]

It is good to know that game developers have no respect for there own medium, and think that they need hollywoods help to get recognised.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Is anyone surprised? I know I'm not. Screen Gems producing this feels like saying that water's wet. On the other hand, I'm a little worried about Ghost House's involvement. Rob Tapert was involved in the production of "Drag Me to Hell", an awesome schlock-fest in pure Raimi fashion - but Ghost House is the kind of label that pushes moody and gutless Haunted House pics ad nauseam. What that means for the movie, though, I have no clue. Less firefights and more terrified hiding in partially sunken cubbyholes?

Either it's bloodless and formulaic, or the director focuses too much on the Infected and spends two hours and a half showing us CGI mushroom-heads getting blasted apart by gunfire.

 

[INVALIDUSERNAME]

It's like a vicious cycle. The games industry makes shitty movie games, and the movie industry will make shitty game-based movies.

It was already a fantastic game in and of itself. Why the hell does it need to be a movie?

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

Wait, The Last of Us was a game?

I kid [small]not really[/small], but this was inevitable, I mean "the Citizen Kane of gaming" was bound to have a movie made at some point.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

Spoiler: totally necessary joke

[center/][i/][b/]But The Last of Us is already a movie![/b][/i][/center]

Edit: Damn you, Akichi. Your ninja-wizard powers may have won this time...

OT:
Pretty poor list of movies for a studio. I have a hard time seeing this project going anywhere.

 

[ShakerSilver]

How can a movie be made into a movie?

Seriously though, why do we need more Hollywood adaptations of things? The story was fine in that game, does it really need to be a movie? It just seems like a shameless cash-in to be honest.

 

[bigfatcarp93]

It's being written by Druckmann, that's at least promising.

Josh Brolin as Joel plz.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I thought this might be a good idea (don't make it about Joel and Ellie, someone else) until I saw the list of other movies made by these people. Um...look, I like the Resident Evil movies. I think they're good fun. But none of those movies are on the same level of storytelling as The Last of Us. I don't think the right type of tone and story will be able to be told here. They'll focus too much on the violence and cool infected kills instead of the people in the story.

 

[CriticalMiss]

I hope there is a cash-in game made based on the cash-in movie based on the game just to make sure that the IP is thoroughly driven in to the ground and abandoned, maybe then people will learn. But I doubt they would. They'd turn it in to a movie about a game being turned in to a movie, which would then become a game obviously.

 

[Marowit]

BOOOOOOO, HISSSSSS!

What a terrible idea. Why not spend the money they're going to pour into this cash-grab, trying to get video game nerds to show up, and put it into another remarkable game like the Last of Us?

I guess cross-mediaform shit like this happens all the time, but still can't but think this is just awful for an IP that did such a brilliant job.

 

[oversoon]

This shouldn't bother me nearly as much as it does, but this is just an awful, awful idea.

 

[Malevolentcafe]

Already an awful idea turning The Last of Us into a movie, BUT what REALLY hits the nail on the coffin is that it's produced by the same people who produced such "gems" as Priest.

 

[Salad Is Murder]

...look, I like the Resident Evil movies. I think they're good fun. But none of those movies are on the same level of storytelling as The Last of Us.

But really, none of the Resident Evil games are on the same level of storytelling as Last of Us; I love the RE games and movies un-ironically as well.

 

[Racecarlock]

I think you're all missing the bright side here.

At least it's not beyond two souls being adapted.

 

[joshuaayt]

This just strikes me as someone thinking "Man, The Last of Us has too good a story to just be a stupid videogame, it has to be made into a *proper* narrative, that fits comfortably into a two hour slot"

Half the appeal of The Last of Us was exploring this new, terrifying, occasionally beautiful post-apocalyptic world. Movies don't do exploration nearly as well as games can, so already this project is sounding like a terrible idea.

 

[truckspond]

I thought that it already WAS a movie!

All joking aside I hope that this movie doesn't continue the trend of shitty videogame movies like the game continued the trend of trying to pass off shitty games as "art". I think it would actually be fairly well suited to a movie (More so than Need For Speed anyway!)