‘The Last of Us’ Season 2 Latest WGA Strike Victim, Pre-Production Stops Mid-Casting With Uncompleted Scripts
Bella Ramsey as Ellie and Pedro Pascal as Joel in episode 9 of HBO’s The Last of Us.
According to Variety, pre-production has stopped on The Last of Us season 2 due to the writers’ strike that began on May 2.
Lead writer Craig Mazin has been regularly spotted at the picket lines, so it’s really no surprise he’s not writing at the moment, but it goes further. Neil Druckmann, who co-wrote with Mazin the season 1 premiere and finale, and wrote on his own the seventh episode, is also not working on the series. No scripts for the second season had been completed before the stoppage, but that didn’t stop the team from starting the casting process.
According to the story, they were using scenes from the video game The Last of Us Part II, which the second season will be adapting, when looking at filling the main roles. That has supposedly stopped as well, though the producers still hope that production could begin by the beginning of 2024 in Vancouver. (As a sidenote, think of how many high-profile projects are supposed to start filming in January-February 2024: Superman: Legacy, Fantastic Four, the new Star Wars movie starring Daisy Ridley, and The Last of Us… For now.)
The Last of Us debuted on HBO earlier this year to splendid reactions from critics and audiences alike, and quickly started breaking viewership records for the network. It was quickly picked up for a second season after two episodes, with both Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey returning. The story of The Last of Us Part II picks up shortly after the events of the first game, but quickly jumps four years forward in time, with a 19-year-old Ellie taking the lead of the story.
The series is not the only major production to have been affected by the WGA strike. Besides Blade, which also shut down pre-production before the writing was complete, Daredevil: Born Again suffered two stops this week, first closing shop for the day on Monday, and then on Wednesday it paused production until further notice when the cast and crew refused to cross the picket line that had been set up around the set in New York City. Shows like Abbott Elementary season 3, Yellowjackets season 3, Stranger Things season 5, and many more have all stopped working due to the strike, which has currently turned into a blinking contest between the studios and the writers guild — will the studios have their hand forced by Wall Street or will the writers have to concede first because they need to get paid?
Expect plenty of delays and more major productions to be shut down in the coming weeks, as the situation gets worse. The Directors Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild are also sitting down with the studios now to renew their contracts, so this could either get resolved fast, or the situation could get even worse.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
