Johan Renck — the Emmy-winning director behind miniseries Chernobyl — will re-team with HBO and Craig Mazin to direct the pilot of the series adaptation of popular Naughty Dog video game The Last of Us.
Sony and Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, which bowed in 2013, garnered critical praise for its engrossing tale of the post-apocalypse, centering on the relationship between Joel, a smuggler in this new world, and Ellie, a teenager who may be key to a cure for a deadly pandemic. Joel, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle the 14-year-old girl out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey as they traverse the U.S. and depend on each other for survival.
The writer and creative director of the game, Neil Druckmann, will work with Mazin to pen and executive produce the series.
Carolyn Strauss will also executive produce along with Renck and Evan Wells, president of Naughty Dog, the Santa Monica-based developer of the game. The project is a co-production with Sony Pictures Television in association with PlayStation Productions. It will be the first television series from PlayStation Productions.
Prior to Chernobyl, Renck was a veteran TV director, with credits Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Halt and Catch Fire and Bates Motel, among others. He is repped by CAA, Anonymous Content, the U.K.’s Casarotto Ramsay and Sloane Offer.
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