Screen Gems today trotted out a Comic-Con god in Sam Raimi, who dealt the kind of catnip that fanboys love. Raimi was there with Neil Druckmann, creator of the Naughty Dog game The Last Of Us, to talk about how that PlayStation 3 survival horror action game is being turned into a feature with Raimi producing and Druckmann now writing the screenplay. Screen Gems President Clint Culpepper, whose previous big vidgame-to-movie transfer was Resident Evil, basically has given over big creative controls to Druckmann in the movie transfer. That includes casting, and choice of director.
At this point, Hugh Jackman and Josh Brolin have been the consensus fan favorites to play the role of Joel, and the choice most heavily favored to play Ellie is Maisie Williams, the Game Of Thrones star who’s so sparked about this prospect that she would have shown up for today’s panel were she not waylaid by being part of an Entertainment Weekly cover shoot for GOT.
Said Raimi: “It’s gonna be a great character journey, a great love story, and great horror fiction.” Raimi took a moment to tease the prospect of more Evil Dead: “I always loved working on that series with Bruce Campbell and Rob Tapert, and my brother and I are writing the Evil Dead TV show right now … with Bruce Campbell.” They even toyed with the idea of having Campbell be in the Last Of Us film adaptation, and really, have we ever had reason to grow tired of that thesp who has been intertwined with Raimi since 1981’s The Evil Dead? That film, by the way, is a touchstone for Druckmann and the creatives behind the Naughty Dog vidgame empire.
Must Read Stories
Subscribe to Deadline Breaking News Alerts and keep your inbox happy.