{"id":171650,"date":"2021-01-19T17:00:32","date_gmt":"2021-01-19T17:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gamerant.com\/last-of-us-new-director-hbo-series\/"},"modified":"2021-01-19T17:00:32","modified_gmt":"2021-01-19T17:00:32","slug":"award-winning-russian-director-joins-hbos-the-last-of-us-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/2021\/01\/19\/award-winning-russian-director-joins-hbos-the-last-of-us-project\/","title":{"rendered":"Award-Winning Russian Director Joins HBO’s ‘The Last of Us’ Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A new director has entered the production for HBO’s series adaptation of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us<\/i><\/strong>.<\/a> The pilot episode originally had Chernobyl<\/i>‘s Johan Renck attached as director, but Renck has departed the project due to an unspecified scheduling conflict.<\/p>\n

Instead, TLOU’s <\/i>pilot is now in the hands of Kantemir Balagov, a young Russian filmmaker who won the 2019 Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival for his feature film Beanpole<\/i>. His work on The Last of Us <\/i>appears to be his first work for hire, and his first project outside of Russia.<\/p>\n

RELATED: The Game Awards Host Geoff Keighley Addresses Last of Us 2 Controversy<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Beanpole <\/i>is a bleak period piece set in post-WWII Leningrad, about the bizarre relationship between two women who barely managed to survive the war. Balagov’s involvement with The Last of Us, <\/i>which has been warmly endorsed by Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann, is indicative that either Balagov is going to dramatically <\/i>depart from his previous work, or the HBO series is being set up as particularly bleak<\/a>. Nobody was expecting a TLOU <\/i>adaptation to be the feel-good hit of the year, especially after TLOU2,<\/i> but going out and hiring award-winning Russian filmmakers sends a very clear thematic message.<\/p>\n