However thrilling they are to play, video games rarely translate well to the big or small screen – indeed, the crossover genre is littered with flops.
But the dystopian, zombie-filled HBO series The Last of Us, premiering in the United States on Sunday and the following day elsewhere, could be about to break the curse.
The series has already won a slew of positive reviews, with a score of 97 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and is on track to be the streaming world’s first success of 2023, 10 years after The Last of Us game first debuted on PlayStation.
Game creator Neil Druckmann, along with Chernobyl screenwriter Craig Mazin, helped develop the narrative for television.
The story remains faithful to the original Naughty Dog title, following the unlikely duo of demoralized smuggler Joel and spirited teenager Ellie, whom he must protect as the planet’s potential last hope against a fast-moving zombie fungus.
The nine-episode season – in which Joel is played by Narcos and Mandalorian star Pedro Pascal and Game of Thrones actress Bella Ramsey portrays Ellie – is set in a post-apocalyptic America ruled by a military dictatorship.
The stakes of the series’ success are high for HBO Max, which just raised its US subscription fee from $14.99 to $15.99 for an ad-free monthly package.
HBO “clearly remains the gold standard for original series, but its parent company (Warner Bros. Discovery) is at a crossroads in terms of how much it’s willing to spend on projects,” said John Cassillo, an analyst with TVREV.
Adaptations of blockbuster video games tend not to do well when they are turned into movies or television series.
On a list drawn up by Box Office Mojo, only five films in this genre have surpassed $400 million in earnings. The top one, Warcraft (2016) – which took in $439 million worldwide – doesn’t figure in the top 250 on the overall box office list.
Other rare successes include Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) starring Angelina Jolie, and more recently Netflix’s Emmy-winning animated series Arcane, set in the League of Legends universe.
In the case of The Last of Us, he explained, “the post-apocalyptic story taps into a popular genre even outside of gaming, and HBO has a long-standing track record succeeding with dramatic series.”
Many more video game adaptations are in the pipeline, including a new Super Mario Bros film, a third installment in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, and a Gran Turismo movie, as well as a Netflix animated series based on Tomb Raider.