The Last of Us: With a bigger budget than a season of Game of Thrones comes the HBO series

How much is the budget of the TV blockbuster?

We knew from the beginning that HBO wouldn’t skimp at all when it came to the TV adaptation of The Last of Us, as they wouldn’t want it to look like anything less than a blockbuster. 

And indeed, from the trailers, it seems that it will be and honor its budget, as the famous network put its hand deeper than it had done for entire seasons of Game of Thrones . Since filming began almost two years ago, it had been rumored that production costs would exceed $10 million per episode, with a total cost of around $100 million .

According to The New Yorker’s report we are getting new information about how much The Last of Us season 1 cost , as it is said that ” HBO gave the series a budget that exceeds each of the first five seasons of Game of Thrones “. It should be mentioned at this point that Game of Thrones had a budget of between $6-8 million in the first three seasons and rose to $8-10 million for seasons 4 and 5. This alone is a sign that HBO believed in the vision of the creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann for the TV adaptation of the famous PlayStation and Naughty Dog video game. 

That the money spent seems to have gone to good use, we saw in the images and trailers with the impressive Clickers, which seem to be taken directly from the game, as well as large-scale post-apocalyptic settings, just like the world of The Last of Us. 

For comparison, episodes of other videogame adaptations in series such as Paramount+ ‘s HALO and Netflix ‘s The Witcher have similar costs . 

Everything we know about HBO’s The Last of Us

The expensive HBO production will be quite different from the video games in several ways, such as a detail  regarding the timeline of events .

It has been said that the  10-episode first season will cover the events of the first The Last of Us, with some necessary time tweaks of course, but also events that will flesh out the TV version of the story.

Season 1 episode directors are:  Kantemir Balagov  (Beanpole),  Jasmila Žbanić  (Quo Vadis, Aida),  Ali Abbasi  (Border),  Peter Hoar  (Marvel’s Daredevil, The Umbrella Academy, Cloak & dagger, Altered Carbon), showrunner  Craig  Mazin  (Chernobyl) and  Neil Druckmann  who also wrote the script and is an executive producer on the project.

The faces of the cast of The Last of Us:

Στη σειρά του The Last of Us πρωταγωνιστούν οι Pedro Pascal (Mandalorian), Bella Ramsey (Game of Thrones) Gabriel Luna (Terminator: Dark Fate), Nico Parker (Dumbo), Nick Offerman (Parks & Rec), Storm Reid (Euphoria), Merle Dandridge (Greenleaf), Jeffrey Pierce (The Foreigner), Troy Baker (Naruto: Shippuden), Ashley Johnson (Blindspot), Lamar Johnson (Your Honor), Keivonn Woodard, Graham Greene (American Gods) και Elaine Miles (Smoke Signals).

Remember that HBO’s The Last of Us series will premiere on January 15. The first episode is even expected to be  as long as a regular movie.