Making ‘The Last of Us’ Season 2: Casting Abby, Video Game Changes and Why the Creators Are at Peace With Telling a ‘Different Version’ of the Story

variety.com:

“You want to see something cool?” On July 3, 2019, Neil Druckmann first said those fateful words to Craig Mazin inside the Santa Monica offices of Naughty Dog, the developer behind the blockbuster 2013 video game “The Last of Us.” As the game’s writer and creative director, Druckmann was the lead architect of its astonishing story of grief and trauma amid a zombie apocalypse.

Mazin — whose gripping limited series “Chernobyl” had just concluded on HBO — revered the game, and had come to Naughty Dog to persuade Druckmann to adapt it for television with him.

But when Druckmann picked up a PlayStation controller during that first meeting, it wasn’t so he and Mazin could discuss one of the game’s fight sequences involving marauding hordes of “infected.” Nor was it to watch one of the many poignant scenes featuring its two protagonists: Joel, a hard-hearted smuggler, and Ellie, a headstrong teenager immune to the fungal pandemic that’s decimated the planet.

Instead, Druckmann, in a display of immediate trust, showed Mazin a scene between Joel and Ellie from the game’s top-secret sequel, “The Last of Us Part II” — nearly a year before it would be available to the public.