The premiere of The Last Of Us was originally supposed to be split into two episodes, the showrunners have revealed.
Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann discussed their initial plan for the adaptation of the beloved video game with host Troy Baker, explaining that they changed the episodes based on HBO’s feedback.
“It used to end on the 20 years later where you see Joel throw the kid in the fire and that was it,” said Mazin and Druckmann.
“The best network executives are there to honestly represent the audience,” they added of HBO executives Casey Bloys and Francesca Orsi.
“They’re not supposed to write things for us, they’re supposed to tell us how they feel and we’re supposed to have faith in their proxy ability.
“In this case, our proxies were saying, ‘It’s not necessarily going to make me want to come back.’ The whole story of The Last Of Us is about Joel and Ellie, so if we only get a little glimpse of her at the end of episode one and we don’t bring them together and we don’t understand their journey and it just ends with a kid dying and another kid dying and credits, people may just not want to come back.
“It was important for them, because they love the show. ‘It will hurt all of us in our hearts if they don’t want to come back.'”
They also said there existed another version of the episode: “We had a version ending on Ellie looking out the window but we haven’t established why we should care about this kid. We care about this kid because we know where this journey is going and we know how important this kid is.”
In NME‘s four-star review of The Last Of Us‘ TV series, we said: “When The Last Of Us was announced, a vocal corner of the internet exploded into anxious anticipation, some sniping that Ramsey didn’t look enough like Ellie.
“Gamers have been burned before by poorly conceived adaptations of their favourite titles, so they were naturally skeptical. But they needn’t have been. The Last Of Us lacks novel ideas, but when it’s this good it can get away with it.”
‘The Last Of Us’ will air exclusively on Sky Atlantic and NOW from January 16.