The Production List has officially announced that filming for Season 2 of HBO’s “The Last of Us” will commence on January 7, 2024, in Vancouver. The production of the highly anticipated second season of this post-apocalyptic series faced delays due to the strikes by WGA and SAG-AFTRA.
The renewal of the series took place in January, and it quickly gained acclaim, ranking as the second-largest premiere since the launch of “Boardwalk Empire” in 2010, following closely behind “House of the Dragon.”
The creative forces behind the series are Craig Mazin, the creator of “Chernobyl,” and Neil Druckmann. HBO’s Casey Bloys had previously mentioned that production for “The Last of Us” Season 2 would commence early in 2024. While an exact release date is yet to be announced, the second season is expected to premiere in early 2025.
The original run of “The Last of Us” on HBO in early 2023 was a massive success, attracting approximately 32 million viewers per episode. Showrunner Craig Mazin has indicated that the storyline from “The Last of Us Part 2” will unfold over multiple seasons, aligning with his previous remarks about the intention to produce more than two seasons.
Adapted from Naughty Dog’s video game, “The Last of Us” unfolds two decades after the collapse of modern civilization. Pedro Pascal portrays Joel, a seasoned survivor tasked with escorting Bella Ramsey’s character, Ellie, a 14-year-old girl, out of a repressive quarantine zone. What starts as a seemingly small assignment evolves into a harrowing journey of survival as they navigate the U.S. and rely on each other for support.
Mazin and Druckmann wrote and executive-produced the series, with a co-production collaboration involving Sony Pictures Television. Executive producers include Carolyn Strauss, Evan Wells, Asad Qizilbash, Carter Swan, and Rose Lam. Production is a joint effort among PlayStation Productions, Word Games, The Mighty Mint, and Naughty Dog.
Craig Mazin, co-creator and executive producer of “The Last of Us,” shared with Deadline earlier this summer that despite the pre-strike challenges, progress had been made, and the first episode had already been written.
“We got pretty far actually, we were doing great,” Mazin noted. “Neil and I had been sitting and talking with Halley Gross, who also worked on the second game as a writer, and Bo Shim, the new writer that was in our little tiny room with us — obviously not a mini room because we’re greenlit the proper, we’re a real show, and because I hate that mini room stuff.”
