According to the executives for the movie adaptation of "The Last of Us," the upcoming film might not do well and may even get canceled after facing some production issues.
Neil Druckmann, creative director for Naughty Dog, the development studio for "The Last of Us" video game, admits that the movie adaptation of the hit title is facing Hollywood development hell. Apparently, Druckmann is also not supportive of the idea since he never wanted to see his creation as a movie and is content at letting it just be a video game.
"We used to just be excited — 'Oh my god, movies are looking at us' — but then as more time passes on we're not excited about a direct adaptation because we've already told that story very well cinematically," said Druckmann. He added that the production difficulties also had something to do with how good the voice actors were in the game, namely Ashley Johnson as Ellie and Troy Baker as Joel.
Their performances were simply too hard to replicate and translate into the big screen, hence Druckmann is quite reluctant, among other reasons. He believes that it would be disorienting for fans to see their favorite characters brought to life by someone else other than the voice actors they have acclimatized to and compared it with casting "Breaking Bad's" Walter White as a different actor in a movie adaptation.
He did state that the first game was already a cinematic experience and would also be quite difficult to replicate in the film without being too derivative or identical even; hence, the production difficulties the creative team is experiencing now in the movie adaptation.
Now, "The Last of Us" film adaptation spearheaded by "Spiderman" director Sam Raimi might get canceled if it goes on in development limbo long enough. Not that it would matter to Naughty Dog since they appear to dislike the upcoming adaptation. This is despite the script for the movie being from Druckmann himself.
