The Last of Us becomes first live-action video game adaptation to earn major award nominations

[midian182]

In brief: Things might not be as bad as they were a decade or two ago, but the general rule still stands: most TV shows and movies based on video games are bad. There are a handful of exceptions, of course, the most lauded being The Last of Us, which has become the first live-action video game adaption to be nominated for major awards.

The recently announced nominees for the 75th annual Emmy Awards include a massive 25 nominations for The Last of Us, making it the second-most-nominated series this year. The show is set to compete in some of the most coveted categories, including Outstanding Drama Series, Outstanding Lead Actor/Actress (Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey), and Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series (Craig Mazin).

The show is also up for awards in a slew of other categories, including Outstanding Production Design, Outstanding Guest Actor/Actress (four actors, three actresses), Visual Effects, Music, and more. The show even has a nomination for its behind-the-scenes short Inside The Episode, which is in the Outstanding Short Form Nonfiction Or Reality Series category.

There have been some true turkeys in the history of video game movie/TV adaptations. The first-ever entry in the genre, Super Mario Bros., is pretty notorious, while popping one's eyes out with a spoon and eating them is preferable to watching Uwe Boll's Alone in the Dark or House of the Dead. Flops are still being made today; Netflix's Resident Evil show was canned after one heavily criticized season.

Despite failing to win over critics, many video game movies make a lot of money – Warcraft made $439 million globally, and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter grossed $312 million. Moreover, the most successful movies and shows, both in terms of critical acclaim and money made, tend to be animated. 2023's The Super Mario Bros. Movie has made $1.3 billion, while Netflix's League of Legends-based Arcane series won an Emmy last year.

The Last of Us shows that with the right people behind it, live-action video game movies and shows can be nominated for awards beyond Golden Raspberries. Part II of the show is expected to arrive next year or early 2025, and Mazin said he wants at least three seasons.

Fans of live-action video game adaptations have plenty to look forward to. There's Amazon's God of War, Peacock's Twisted Metal, and another highly anticipated show from Amazon Prime Video: Fallout. Hopefully, they will receive similar levels of success as HBO's series.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/99416-last-us-becomes-first-live-action-video-game.html

 

[Puiu]

Hopefully we get more good shows like this. I actually think the One Piece series will be decent.

 

[dangh]

Actually, it is easy to make a good serial based on a video game. But there is one rule, which seems to be always omitted: do what game did well, don't push your own agenda. Popular games are popular because they respect their audience and provide story, characters and suspension of disbelief. And they are made with love and focus.
It is way too often that series and those poor *****s writers are butchering the original material to level where no fan of games can stand it anymore, and all other do not really care but see some crap on the screen. Short example - Witcher series. Written by writers who really dislike the game and Witcher world ( https://gamerant.com/the-witcher-writer-recalls-staff-mocking-source-material ), moving focus from MC to secondary characters (it become Yenefer story), making 'ugly sorceress' just to ensure they are woke enough (and I don't really care about races there, or free love, but I just realized... Dandelion in books and games was a womanizer, has he actually had a single woman scene in the series?), and absolutely effing up with time and space (really, they are just jumping all over the map without any plan, reason, time in between, logical connection, coherency - I had same thought with a SW ep7, where thay are running from imperial cruisers with whole fleet, but in meantime they are dropping aside for a coffee in a small ship on any other planet in universe...). Not to say some crazy stupid *** actions where Yen was trying to sacrifice Ciri for ... what? and then later they are best friends?
In this light, making anything which actually follow (to an acceptable extend) original content like TLoU or Dune is something refreshing and surprising. And successful. And rare, because people who making decisions have this weird stupid tendency to put some unrelated agenda first. Thankfully, this puts those companies down and open space for smaller creators. We can only hope.

 

[toooooot]

Ah yes, just like tlou2. Although, I remember tlou2 winning most awards of that year except for player voted award which went to another game. Fake award from people who live in the smallest bubble of their own reality

 

[James Ryan]

Could have been the Witcher if they followed the damn source material...
Story from the books....
Visuals from the games....
It was a done deal and they stuffed it up monumentally.