TV
Pedro Pascal Cast as Joel In “The Last Of Us” HBO Series!
It’s been a wild night with quite a few major news breaks.
Earlier this evening we reported that “Game of Thrones” actress Bella Ramsey was cast as Ellie, a teenager who may be key to a cure for a deadly pandemic, in HBO’s live-action “The Last of Us” series.
It gets even better. Ramsey will be joined by her “Game of Thrones” co-star Pedro Pascal, who has not only been absolutely killer on Disney+’s “Mandalorian” series, but was also dynamite in Warner Bros. and HBO Max’s Wonder Woman 1984.
Deadline reports that Pascal will play the lead role of Joel, “a hardened survivor who is hired to smuggle Ellie (Ramsey), a 14-year-old girl, out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey, as they both must traverse across the U.S. and depend on each other for survival.”
Adds the site: “Pascal’s Joel, tormented by past trauma and failure, must trek across a pandemic-ravaged America, all the while protecting a girl who represents the last hope of humanity.”
Kantemir Balagov (Beanpole) will be directing the pilot episode. Game creator/writer Neil Druckmann is on board to co-write and produce. Craig Mazin (“Chernobyl”) is developing the series for HBO, and he’ll be working with Druckmann to write and executive produce the small screen adaptation.
Joel in “The Last of Us” video game franchise
Blade Runner is headed to the small screen in Prime Video’s upcoming Blade Runner 2099, set 50 years after Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049, in a world where replicants have emerged on top after an uprising.
Humans are no longer in power.
At the forefront of the new series are stars Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All At Once) and Hunter Schafer (Cuckoo), and EW has shared the first images of their characters.
Yeoh stars as a replicant Blade Runner named Olwen, facing the final days of her life. It’s a twist on the Roy Batty story from the first film; here, that story will be told from the replicant’s perspective.
Opposite her is Schafer as Olwen’s partner, Cora, a human fugitive pretending to be a replicant. Olwen and Cora will be working together to investigate missing rogue replicants.
Blade Runner 2099 comes from Alcon Entertainment, Scott Free, and Amazon Studios. Silka Luisa (“Shining Girls”) is writing, showrunning, and executive producing.
Jonathan van Tulleken (“Shōgun”) will direct and executive produce the first two episodes.
Luisa tells EW that Ridley Scott’s seminal sci-fi noir acts as the series’ North Star, but it’ll forge its own identity: “We leaned into sunshine noir. You’re still very much in the Blade Runner world, but the show is about a birth. It’s about a birth of a city. It’s about a birth of a replicant era. These characters are discovering who they really are. And so the climate is hot, it’s sticky, it’s sunny. We’re on the coast a lot. We’re in Santa Monica a lot. So it’s like you’re seeing Ridley’s texture, but you’re seeing it in the sunshine noir filter.”
The showrunner adds, “The show is really imagining what comes after us, and what does it mean to be human in a world where humanity is no longer relevant?“
Dimitri Abold (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes), Lewis Gribben (Somewhere Boy), Katelyn Rose Downey (The Nun II), and Daniel Rigby (Renegade Nell) also star in the upcoming series. Johnny Harris (A Gentleman in Moscow), Amy Lennox (Only Child), Sheila Atim (The Woman King), and Matthew Needham (House of the Dragon) join as recurring guest stars.
Blade Runner 2099 is expected to premiere later this year, so stay tuned.
Credit: Clay Enos/Prime Video
Credit: Clay Enos/Prime Video
Credit: Clay Enos/Prime Video
Credit: Clay Enos/Prime Video
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