By HBO is currently well into production on the second season of its acclaimed adaptation of Naughty Dog’s “The Last of Us” and now co-creators and showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have now spelled out just how big the series could get.
As we know the first season adapted the original 2013 “The Last of Us” video game across nine episodes. Some elements got expanded on, others were skipped or altered, but they covered many of the key story beats and finished right where that first game finished.
2020’s “The Last of Us Part II” video game however is a much more substantial beast in terms of content and narrative, one which is more than twice as long as its predecessor. The producers already made it clear they intend to split it across multiple seasons.
Recently came the reveal that the second season, which will wrap filming in August, will run for a shorter seven episodes. Mazin explains to Deadline that they came to that number due to a natural break in the story.
Combined with them going down some new tangents not in the game, such as they did with the first season’s celebrated third episode “Long, Long Time,” the result is a show that could go beyond the previously planned three seasons:
“The story material that we got from Part II of the game is way more than the story material that was in the first game, so part of what we had to do from the start was figure out how to tell that story across seasons. When you do that, you look for natural breakpoints, and as we laid it out, this season, the national breakpoint felt like it came after seven episodes.
We don’t think that we’re going to be able to tell the story even within two seasons [2 and 3] because we’re taking our time and go down interesting pathways which we did a little bit in Season 1 too.
We feel like it’s almost assuredly going to be the case that – as long as people keep watching and we can keep making more television – Season 3 will be significantly larger. And indeed, the story may require Season 4.”
Later in the interview, Mazin adds: “One thing is absolutely for sure, I don’t see how we could tell the story that remains after Season 2 is complete in one more season.” Both reiterate, however, that they have no plans to go beyond the material of the second game so once they’ve got that story out – they’re done.
So far, “The Last of Us” has been picked up through Season 2 by HBO with further seasons depending upon viewership. Mazin says they “want every episode to feel like its own blockbuster” going forward, and Druckmann hints there will be revisiting of the first season events in the new run:
“The two stories are so interconnected that inevitably we’re going to be touching on things from the first season or the first game because there is a continuation of those characters.”
Mazin confirms at least one episode is going to be ‘quite big’ but he isn’t sure he would call it “feature length,” and says the aim is “generally hitting about an hour” for each.
He adds: “The scope of this thing is at times absolutely massive. And Season 3 promises to be just as big if not bigger”.
The post HBO’s “Last of Us” May Get Four Seasons appeared first on Dark Horizons.
