HBO's The Last Of Us huge budget was bigger than most Game Of Thrones seasons

The days are trickling away til The Last of Us comes to the small screen, starring Pedro Pascal as Joel and Bella Ramsey as Ellie. As an acclaimed example of post-apocalyptic fiction and a beloved game by millions, there's a lot riding on this adaptation. Fortunately, it looks like the show is on track to knock our new Christmas socks off, and a recent report alleges that HBO bestowed a bigger budget for The Last of Us than the each of the first five seasons of Game of Thrones.

In short, they are not messing about here. Now for a mandatory sentence about how video game adaptations haven't always hit the mark. In HBO's The Last of Us, though, some cheering choices have been taken with the development of the game into this new format. Original composer Gustavo Santaolalla is composing the show's score, and the first few reviews are luminous with praise. One critic even compared it to Blade 2 which is so rogue I have to see what they're on about.

Check out the trailer below:

Again, the team at HBO aren't a fan of half-measures. As per The New Yorker, the show's budget is ginormous. "The game’s overgrown cities were informed by The World Without Us, a book that blends science journalism and speculative fiction, examining how environments might degrade if humans were to vanish," explained the article. "To achieve the same effect on a grand scale, HBO gave the series a budget exceeding that of each of the first five seasons of Game of Thrones."

Monetarily, that's approximately more than $69 million - I worked that out by finding all of the budgets for the first five seasons of Game of Thrones and then working out the median. It's pretty hefty, especially when you remember that Game of Thrones used to hold the record for the most expensive TV show ever produced before Amazon's The Rings of Power was released (which is an example of all that glitters is not gold).

I also recommend reading the whole article from The New Yorker if you're a The Last of Us superfan for greater insight into the influences and the creative collaborations between HBO and Naughty Dog. The show premieres on 15 January on HBO Max and then comes to Sky on 16 January.