Johan Renck, an Emmy Award-winning director of last year’s mini-series Chernobyl will helm the pilot episode of the HBO adaptation of the video game The Last of Us, says SlashFilm. He will join Chernobyl’s creator Craig Mazin who will also work on this new series. Additionally, HBO hired Neil Druckmann, who wrote and co-directed the original game to help with its adaptation as well.
Back in the early 1990s, Renck formed a pop duo, Stakka Bo, in his native Sweden, producing several hits like Here We Go Again. He began his filmmaking career by directing music videos, working for artists such as Beyonce, Madonna, and Kylie Minogue. He also directed episodes of shows like Breaking Bad, Vikings, and The Walking Dead. Renck’s most successful work to date has been Chernobyl – a five-part depiction of the historical 1986 nuclear disaster in Ukraine that, some historians claim, helped hasten the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Moving from the historical disaster to a merely fictional one shouldn’t present any problem for Renck.
Set in the post-apocalyptic near-future, The Last of Us follows grizzled veteran Joel tasked to smuggle a teenage girl named Ellie across the devastated United States, avoiding the zombies and marauding gangs. The game was first released on PlayStation 3 in 2013 and it quickly became both critical and commercial success. Its sequel The Last of Us Part II is coming out this June.
