How The Last of Us went from hit game to hit zombie tv

Channels with Peter Kafka

Vox Media Podcast Network

Business News, News, Tv & Film, Technology

4.4 • 585 Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2023

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The critically-lauded video game The Last of Us is now a critically-lauded HBO series. It's about a global pandemic that turns much of the world’s population into zombie-like monsters. Executive producer (and former roommate of Ted Cruz) Craig Mazin talks to Recode’s Peter Kafka about what makes the game special — and adaptable into prestige television. Mazin dives into how he went from writing The Hangover sequels to making Chernobyl, and the science and emotional math of storytelling. Featuring: Craig Mazin (@clmazin), showrunner for The Last of Us Host: Peter Kafka (@pkafka), Senior Editor at Recode More to explore: Subscribe for free to Recode Media, Peter Kafka, one of the media industry's most acclaimed reporters, talks to business titans, journalists, comedians, and more to get their take on today's media landscape. About Recode by Vox: Recode by Vox helps you understand how tech is changing the world — and changing us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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1:05.6	This is Recode Media, Peter Kafka.
1:07.9	That is me, and today I'm talking to Craig Mason. He's the co-creator
1:12.1	The Last of Us. It's currently streaming on HBO. He also created Chernobyl, also on HBO.
1:17.7	Prior to that, some of you knew him as Ted Cruz's roommate at Princeton who hated Ted Cruz.
1:22.4	Welcome, Craig. Yeah, everyone hated Ted, but I was also his freshman, your roommate, who hated him.
1:28.9	It became your personality for a while. We'll talk about it later. I went looking for your tweets.
1:33.7	I saw you protected them now. So maybe it's not something you want to spend a ton of time on.
1:37.5	But you made this awesome show. It's on HBO. I watched the first episode last night.
1:41.4	A lot of people have played and loved The Last of Us, the video games,
1:45.5	2013 video game. I think it's still exclusive to Sony PlayStation. It is. So they know
1:50.0	what the show is. But all people haven't played that game. So tell us what the show is about.
1:56.1	Sure. It is ostensibly about a pandemic that pushes the world into an apocalypse, which sounds fairly familiar.
2:04.9	And the pandemic has transformed most of humanity into these monstrous creatures, which probably also sounds very familiar.
2:13.9	But what the story is really about is a man who suffered a terrible loss, who is forced to take this kid across this hostile country to try and improve humanity, I guess would be the best way to say it.
	...

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