Maisie Williams certain of casting in potential The Last of Us film
The Last of Us was one of 2013’s most acclaimed video games, a plot-heavy and relationship-centered post-apocalyptic game made by Uncharted developers Naughty Dog. With its mass popularity and much-lauded story and characters, it was a natural for a film option. The project has director/producer Sam Raimi (Spiderman, Evil Dead 2) attached—but it doesn’t quite have a script yet.
This hasn’t stopped people associated with the game or the project from making plans though. One of those plans is for Game of Thrones’ Maisie Williams to star as the teenaged protagonist, Ellie. Williams was announced to have been in discussions for the role at Comic-Con last year, but in an interview with IGN, she made it clear that those discussions were significantly more advanced than had been previously reported. It now seems reasonably certain that if the film gets made, she’ll be starring….
According to IGN: “as far as [Maisie is] concerned ‘it’s looking like, ‘yes”.” That doesn’t sound terribly solid on its own, but the interview includes an anecdote about how Raimi and game director Neil Druckmann wanted her to moderate a panel for it at Comic-Con. Williams declined that particular opportunity, but still feels attached to the project.
The Last of Us’ Ellie is a teenaged girl in the Boston area who is exposed to the zombie plague but, for the first time that anyone knows, she doesn’t get turned. She joins with an older man, Joel, who protects her on a journey across the country to meet a group who believes they can use Ellie to cure the zombie plague. Ellie could easily have been a two-dimensional MacGuffin of a character, but her writing and vocal performance (by Ashley Johnson, who recommended Maisie for the live-action role) give her wonderful enthusiasm, sarcasm, vulnerability, and badassery.
By those standards, Maisie Williams would be perfect. She looks the part, and we know her physical acting gifts as Arya Stark are impressive. My only concern is her accent–Ellie always felt quintessentially American to me, and I don’t know if Maisie can do an American accent yet–but this is not an insurmountable problem.
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