Video game to television adaptions are becoming ever more prevalent on our screens, big and small. Though the genre has grown in popularity, with audiences showing up for Netflix series The Witcher and Arcane as well as Universal’s The Super Mario Bros. The Movie, they have struggled to garner award recognition, that is until The Last of Us.
The Last of Us has defeated all the odds to become one of the most successful shows on television this year so far as well as receiving the second highest amount of nominations for this year’s Emmy Awards behind Succession, which many people had already predicted. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Craig Mazin, one of the show’s showrunners alongside Neil Druckmann, the game’s creator, gave a very concise response to this result, saying “It feels great.”
Of course, he embellished a little on this adding, “To the extent that we’ve helped raise the profile of an art form, I’m incredibly proud.” He turns his praise to the man who made this possible in the first place, Druckmann, who created “one of the best video games of all time.” To be able to work from such acclaimed source material, one that has won many awards of its own almost feels like “cheating” to Mazin, but he is aware that even with a great game to work from, it doesn’t always translate to a great show.
“That said, I think we’re all pretty aware that adapting video games is at best difficult and at worst hopeless, there’s some games you just can’t. They’re just not meant to be adapted, but this one was. It was hard work to do, but I did it with Neil, and the two of us did it out of love.
Mazin was holding a Zoom call with Druckmann, Pascal, Ramsey, and Offerman as well as producers Jacqueline Lesko and Carolyn Strauss when the nominations were being announced and afterwards he reached out to many more to share the good news, “Basically I was just texting and emailing everybody across multiple continents, covering the U.S. and Canada and the U.K. and Malta and Australia.”
The series is up for 24 nominations at this year’s Emmy including a nod to leads Pedro Pascal for Lead Actor in a Drama Series and Bella Ramsey for Lead Actress in a Drama Series. Many of the other actors also received award nods and the entire show is up for Best Drama Series. It has some stiff competition from the likes of Succession and The White Lotus which also racked up a large chunk of nominations respectively.
It will be interesting to see where the chips fall on the night of the 75th Emmy Awards which will be aired Monday, September 18 on FOX.