This was the movie that was never made of ‘The Last of Us’ by Sam Raimi

‘The Last of Us’ is being one of the series of the year and it is becoming one of the best video game adaptations of all time, but not too long ago the movies and series that emerged from the world of consoles were practically synonymous with failure.

We are talking about the era of ‘Doom’, ‘House of the Dead’, ‘Need for Speed’, ‘Prince of Persia’… No one in Hollywood seemed to hit the nail on the head adapting games to the big screen. ‘Tomb Raider’ and, above all, ‘Resident Evil’ managed to get good results at the box office, but their resemblance to the original material was anecdotal to say the least.

In recent years we have begun to experience a change in trend with hits like ‘Uncharted’, ‘Sonic’ and ‘Detective Pikachu’, and ‘The Last of Us’ seems to definitively establish itself as the spearhead of this new wave of faithful adaptations and at the height of the originals.

But this series, orchestrated by the creator of the game Neil Druckman and the person in charge of the Emmy and Golden Globe-winning series ‘Chernobyl’, has taken 10 years to come to fruition after the launch of the video game in 2013, and the plans to adapt the material in audiovisual format were very different at first.

The producer of the ‘Resident Evil’ saga Screem Gems announced in 2014 a film of ‘The Last of Us’ together with the creators of the video game Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley and the presidents of Naughty Dog Evan Wells and Christopher Balestra. The one chosen to take charge of the project was a name with experience in horror movies, zombies and comic book adaptations: Sam Raimi.

Raimi seemed to be the perfect choice to handle the material; his ‘Infernal Possession’ trilogy changed horror cinema forever and brought a new vision of the “infected” in popular culture. It’s not hard to see the link between Raimi’s influence and the designs used in ‘The Last of Us’. Furthermore, Raimi was (and is) known for his preference for practical effects and his staging of the saga’s fungal “monsters” would have been as faithful as possible to the originals.

After leaving the franchise ‘Spider-Man’, which for many is still the best superheroic trilogy in the cinema and worthy of being among the best superhero movies of all time, Raimi had returned to slimy horror with ‘Drag Me to Hell’ and had performed with ease in a big budget like ‘Oz, a world of fantasy’.

Maisie Williams from ‘Game of Thrones’ was in talks to play Ellie in the filmand even met with the producers and with Raimi, but his commitment to the HBO series set in Westeros put his participation at risk.

However, the main obstacle to making the film was the famous “creative differences”. To fit the game’s 13 hours into a feature film, significant parts of the story had to be cut out and the script completely redrafted, with Druckmann going so far as to state that the film would have “big changes”. compared to the source material, although they would maintain the tone, message and emotion of the game. But he couldn’t keep his word.

Raimi, along with the film’s production company, wanted a ‘World War Z’-style action thriller. to better sell it to a large audience, while Druckmann was committed to maintaining the dark and atmospheric aesthetics of the game, closer to proposals such as ‘The road’.

The project was practically dead already in 2016, but it was not until 2020 that the adaptation in the form of a series by Craig Mazin, the person in charge of ‘Chernobyl’, with Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsay as Joel and Ellie was announced. Finally, Druckmann’s vision has come to prevail and the duration of a television series seems the most appropriate to capture the essence of the game in all its splendor so, as much as we would have liked to see Sam Raimi leading hybrid hordes between mushrooms and humans, we can give thanks.

‘The Last of Us’ is breaking records in its premiere on HBO Max while receiving praise from critics and audienceswith several of the best chapters of recent years such as ‘The Last of Us’ 1×03 and a season 2 of ‘The Last of Us’ confirmed that it was an open secret.