The Last of Us showrunner Craig Mazin offers insight into show’s future amid Hollywood strikes

Craig Mazin has shared some welcome information for followers of The Last of Us relating to its forthcoming second season.

The dystopian thriller collection, primarily based on the online game of the identical identify, first aired in January. It stars Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey as survivors of a lethal mass fungal an infection that destroyed the world 20 years prior.

Although it was renewed for season two almost instantly after the success of its first episode, The Last of Us is one of a number of reveals which were on a growth break consequently of the Hollywood strikes.

Nevertheless, in a latest interview, Mazin, who’s the programme’s showrunner, shared that the group will likely be prepared to select up work as quickly because the strikes finish, as vital developments on the season had been made earlier than labour ceased.

“We had been in a position to map out all of season two,” Mazin defined on a latest episode of the Awardist podcast for Entertainment Weekly.

He added: “And I additionally wrote and submitted the script for the primary episode and despatched it in [to HBO] round 10:30 or 10:40 pm proper earlier than… the strike started.”

WGA, the union that includes 11,500 writers and script editors for TV and movie, have been placing since 2 Might.

On 14 July, Sag-Aftra – the Display Actors Guild and American Federation of Tv and Radio Artists – additionally started picketing, with each unions demanding fairer charges of pay and limits on the use of AI, amongst different factors.

Because of this, Hollywood has successfully shut down, with no union members in a position to movie, write or promote any mission belonging to a studio that the teams are picketing towards.

Mazin has been in a position to hold some crew members employed all through this time with out violating the principles of the strike. Nevertheless, he additionally admitted that the group gained’t be capable of start filming on the dates they initially deliberate.

He defined: “I believe it’s turning into basically a close to certainty that we gained’t be capable of begin [filming] once we had been hoping to begin, which is upsetting. We’re all raring to go.

“That is what we’re born to do,” he continued. “That is how we not solely select to dwell our lives, however I imagine [how we] are compelled to dwell our lives. In any other case, why the hell would we do that insane job? I can guarantee you it’s not for cash.”

The Hollywood shutdown, and the studios’ refusal to grant the unions’ requests, has affected the manufacturing of a number of properties. In some circumstances, it’s thought to have contributed to the cancellation of TV programmes that had beforehand been projected to return for additional seasons.

Last week, Amazon Prime Video introduced that neither The Peripheral, starring Chloe Grace Moretz, nor queer-focused ladies’s baseball comedy-drama A League of Their Personal, would return for second seasons, regardless of beforehand being ordered.