HBO’s The Last of Us series might end up having to adapt source material that doesn’t exist yet, which didn’t go so well when Game of Thrones tried it a few years ago. The Last of Us TV show has proven to be so popular that HBO will want to keep it going for as long as it can, with as many seasons as possible, which could mean that the TV show will have to tackle story material from The Last of Us Part III before the game has even been released. When David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and their writing staff had to adapt unpublished George R.R. Martin books for the screen, Game of Thrones’ reputation went from one of the most acclaimed and popular TV shows ever made to one of the biggest disappointments in TV history.
While the first Last of Us game fit neatly into the first season of the TV show, turning the second game into television will be a much bigger challenge. The epic narrative of The Last of Us Part II provides Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann with a ton of material to work with. They might be able to stretch the second game to two or maybe even three seasons of the TV show. But HBO will undoubtedly want to keep its latest critical and commercial hit going after Ellie’s quest for revenge against Abby comes to a head at the Rattlers’ compound.
Once they’ve finished turning the mega-scale story of The Last of Us Part II into a couple of seasons of the TV show, HBO will want to know what’s next. Druckmann probably has some ideas worked out for where the story of The Last of Us Part III will go, but the game is nowhere near being finished. Rather than cherry-picking the essential parts of a complete, polished game, Mazin and Druckmann will have to flesh out a rough story outline, much like Benioff and Weiss did with Martin’s outlines for the last couple of A Song of Ice and Fire books.
Game Of Thrones Adapted Rough Outlines Of Unfinished Novels For Its Final Seasons
The final seasons of Game of Thrones were adapted from Martin’s rough story outlines for The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring, which remain unfinished and unpublished to this day. When the TV series caught up with all of Martin’s published material, HBO was determined to keep its biggest hit show going into uncharted narrative territory. What the Game of Thrones writing team excelled at in the early seasons was paring down a huge, epic tome to its essential elements for a thrilling season of television. Where they stumbled was trying to stretch a bare-bones list of plot beats into a larger, all-encompassing narrative.
Now that The Last of Us is established as HBO’s next blockbuster show, the network will want to keep it going for as long as possible, just like it did with Game of Thrones. But there’s only one more game for the team to adapt. Naughty Dog has all but confirmed a third Last of Us game, and the franchise is getting spun off into other stories and gaming experiences, but there’s been no official announcement of The Last of Us Part III, which means it’s not even in production yet. Even if there is story material to mine beyond the events of The Last of Us Part II, it’s still in the early days of development.
