HBO’s “The Last of Us” scored a renewal order in January, shortly after the adaptation of the acclaimed PlayStation video game premiered. In the weeks afterwards, it became one of the few pop culture phenomenons of the year thus far.
The creators subsequently told us that while the first season adapted the first game, the second season couldn’t adapt all of “The Last of Us Part II” and so was likely to split the story across two seasons.
Deadline spoke with co-creator/executive producer Craig Mazin this week following its two dozen Emmy nominations the other day. In that interview, he talked about where the production on the second season stands as of now.
First up, he confirms several new writers had joined him and fellow co-creator/executive producer Neil Druckmann on the new run, and by May 1st (when the writer’s strike began), they had already made some clear headway:
“We got pretty far, actually. We were doing great. Neil and I had been sitting and talking with Halley Gross, who also worked on the second game as a writer, and Bo Shim, the new writer… We know what the whole season is, and I was actually able to get a write and submit the first episode right before the deadline hit.”
He adds he’s currently “just walking around kind of brain-writing, I guess, which I don’t think is scabbing” as they also have to prepare for the time when the strikes are over. At that point, they will have to get back to work fast if they want to get the show on the air as planned.
Previously the timetable had been that the series was hoping to start by year’s end ahead of a 2025 release. At this point, it’s anyone’s guess as to when work can begin again, but Mazin adds it’s still possible for the second season to hit its originally planned launch window:
“We had a little more flexibility, I think, than normally just because we had to wait a little bit longer any way to line up production with the weather. A lot of what we do is outside, and so we had a schedule that weirdly hasn’t been immediately impacted.
But we’re getting pretty close. We can’t keep our original start dates forever obviously. If these strikes go much longer, we inevitably will have to push, and that hurts us, and it hurts the audience, and it hurts HBO.
We all, everybody wants to get back to work; I think everybody that’s actually doing the work, including the network people who are with us on the ground, I think everybody just wants to get this solved. So fingers crossed.”
The first season’s 200-day shoot ran for many months in Calgary and Edmonton, kicking off in July 2021, around a year and a half before it made it to air. The second season will be based in Vancouver as much of the new season unfolds in what remains of Seattle.
Mazin also confirmed that the plan is to do a third season should the second season go well:
“It’s going to be more than one season. There’s more story, so this show will not end with Season 2 unless people don’t watch it, and we’ll get cancelled. Barring that, we will be doing some things exactly the way they were in the game.
We’re going to do other things that are in the game, and we’re gonna do some things that are in the game, but we’re gonna do them differently in our own method. No matter if you have played the game or not. You will be surprised as the season unfolds. We have some interesting twists and turns.”
One thing you won’t be seeing next season is another ‘special episode’ about Bill & Frank. That mostly standalone episode drew raves and awards attention, and Mazin says they don’t plan to go back to that well with an unnecessary follow-up: “We aren’t going to milk it. When we do something that we think is beautiful, we let it be as it is and find other beautiful things to do.”
He also says the second season will have “moments, just like there were in the first season, where the infected are very present”. The Clickers are expected to show up more next season following complaints of them being underutilized in the first season.
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