The second season of The Last of Us has delayed auditions and pre-production due to the ongoing writers strike.
Variety reports that as showrunner and primary writer on The Last of Us season 1, Craig Mazin, has been on strike since May 1, current auditions for the sophomore season adapting the smash-hit Playstation franchise have been paused. Previously, due to a lack of available scripts for season 2, the HBO series had purportedly been auditioning new talent using video game developer Naughty Dog’s own scripts for The Last of Us: Part 2, which season 2 of the show will adapt in part.
Neither Mazin, nor Naughty Dog’s co-president and show co-writer Neil Druckmann, have been working on The Last of Us season 2 in any capacity since the WGA announced a strike at the beginning of May. The series is still currently expected to begin filming in early 2024, although at this early stage of the strike — and little to no signs that studios are anywhere close to coming to the table on the WGA’s demands — plans are going to be in flux.
The Last of Us becomes the latest major genre show to be publicly impacted by the strike. Fellow HBO series House of the Dragon has continued production on its own sophomore season with no writing staff on set, as have series such as The Rings of Power at Amazon and Disney+’s Andor — the latter of which was briefly embroiled in controversy when it was alleged that showrunner Tony Gilroy had continued to work in a producing capacity on the series, in part to Disney’s own internal demands to its multi-hyphenate creative talent, only for Gilroy to publicly clarify that he had ceased working on the series.
To see more of Gizmodo’s reporting on the latest with the WGA strike, check out our updated post of impacted shows here.