The Last Of Us film adaptation on its way

So, hugely successful and all round fantastic game The Last Of Us is being made into a film.

'The Last of Us', oozing cinematic potential

Usually, this would be seen as bad news – there is, after all, an historic trend of game to film adaptations being ruined in the transition from small screen to big; Tomb Raider; Max Payne; Mortal Kombat; Hitman; Prince of Persia; Final Fantasy… the list goes on and, frankly, gets a lot worse.

A small selection of failed attempts to re-create video games on the big screen

But, there is hope for The Last Of Us adaptation as, reportedly, the script will be penned by creative director of the game, Neil Druckmann. It’s unusual to see a member of the game design team take on such a prominent role in the film’s production, but it’s a welcome change.

The adaptation will be produced by Screen Gems (a subsidiary of Sony) in collaboration with Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures. Screen Gems president, Clint Culpepper, stated that “[w]hen I saw the quality of the storytelling, I knew the audience for this project was far greater than just the gaming community and that Neil Druckmann must write the screenplay” – sure, it’s a cliché press release, but knowing that Druckmann is in charge of creating a screen story out of Naughty Dog’s bestseller is a good sign; The Last Of Us had a narrative repeatedly praised as a breakthrough in video game storytelling, after all.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out, as it could potentially change the way game to film adaptations are handled in the future; should Druckmann prove his worth with the script it’s possible other studios will start to see opportunity in using game writers for film adaptations, and to me that’s definitely a good thing.