Pre-production on the second season of The Last of Us had to be paused due to the writers’ strike in Hollywood.
In pursuit of fairer wages for screenwriters, the Screenwriters Union of America has ordered all professionals in the field to go on strike until studios and streaming platforms decide to comply with the requests. So far, productions like the Marvel Studios film Blade and the fifth season of Stranger Things have also been affected by the strike.
According to Variety, The Last of Us showrunners were making casting preparations for the show’s second season when production was put on hold.
According to sources familiar with the project, so far, the casting team has been asking the actors to read excerpts taken directly from The Last of Us Part 2 game, which will serve as the basis for the second season of the series, during auditions, since that there are still no scripts for the series itself.
The second season is expected to begin shooting early next year. Previously, actors Pedro Pascal (Joel) and Bella Ramsey (Ellie), along with series co-creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, had hinted that filming would begin in the coming months.
Like the first season, the second year of the series is expected to shoot in Canada, although some reports indicate that they will not shoot in Calgary, Alberta, using Vancouver as the setting.
Earlier this month (before the strikes themselves started), Mazin told the LA Times that he remembers “very distinctly how it all played out in 2007” (referring to the previous strike), but that this was different, as “even companies understand at a fundamental level that they screwed things up”.
The writer and creator continued, “It’s almost as if someone finally points them out and says, ‘You’ve just destroyed the foundation of your own house and now everything is crumbling around you.’
They know they need to fix it too… I think this is one of those moments where even companies are like, ‘Okay, we’ve gone too far.’
For now, we still don’t have an agreement between the union and the studios to end the strike.
Will other films and series also have to be paralyzed?
