As you’ve probably heard and hopefully experienced, The Last of Us, be it on the PS3 or now PS4 is a masterpiece. Thrilling gameplay, beautiful visuals, and a haunting score make it one of the highest award video games ever. But the true soul of the game like any Hollywood film isn’t in the visual spectacle, but the script. At its heart, The Last of Us is about a broken man that’s told in a post apocalyptic world. Unlike a film thats usually about 2 hours in lengthy, Naughty Dog and company had over 15 hours to tell their tale, something that they won’t be able to do once The Last of Us film is released.

To help make the transition from video game to the silver screen, Neil Druckmann, Creative Director on The Last of Us is doing some major rewrites to make the film happen.

 In two hours you can’t tell the same kind of story that you can in a game like The Last of Us, which is 15 hours 

More details about The Last of Us movie after the jump.

Druckmann continues:

 I’m in the middle of it now, and it’s been super difficult because there’s so much that happens in The Last of Us – even just in the cinematics – that can’t fit in a film, let alone all the gameplay in-between and dialogue. 

Luckily for fans, the game is not only in the good hands of Druckmann and Naughty Dog, but also Sam Raimi (Evil Dead, Spider-Man).

 It almost has this novel quality as far as how much content there is. And a film works really well when it’s laser-focused, so the first part of it was like: well, what is this story really about? It’s clearly about Joel and Ellie. What are the most important beats that we can’t lose? Start with those, and cut everything else out.

It’s been really difficult to cut certain things out, but what I’m starting to get this is really focused narrative that’s about these two characters. Some parts will be similar to the game and some parts will be quite different, but it’s kind of interesting in helping me understand this other medium and its strengths compared to video games 

As Druckmann points out, the The Last of Us movie will most certainly be different than its video game counterpart and that’s ok. Instead, fans of the game and those who might not have had a chance to the play the game can get a  more focused narrative into what makes the game so special.

Discuss:

Do you think The Last of Us works as a movie?

[Via MCVUK]