HBO's The Last Of Us Will Completely Transform A Small Canadian Town For A Key Game Location
HBO's stab at finally (FINALLY) making a legitimately good video game adaptation is well underway as the crew of "The Last of Us" continues its trek across Alberta, Canada. And it looks like they may have found their perfect location to represent Jackson, Wyoming, a key post-apocalypse haven for "the good guys" in both the first and second game.
The real town being used by the production is Canmore and in order to transform this picture-perfect town nestled below Canada's Rocky Mountains the studio has to have the cooperation of the local government, which mean... you guessed it! A Power Point presentation for the city council! This presentation was made public for a brief second before anyone realized that the Power Point presentation included production art for the show's plans for their sets and now the video is private.
Of course, anything of any interest whatsoever that appears on the internet, no matter for how a brief a time, will be screencapped by at least one interested party and that's just what happened here.
What A View
A Twitter account created to find any and all tidbits of news about this show's production, @HBOsTheLastofUs, grabbed four production art pieces shared during this meeting and has shared them with the world.
Images from HBO's PowerPoint presentation at the Council meeting in Canmore, the town that will transform into Jackson this November for the filming of #TheLastofUs
via @Joanastic pic.twitter.com/faAY9Et6x5
— The Last of Us on HBO – Status (@HBOsTheLastofUs) November 2, 2021
Now, fans of the Naughty Dog games will notice a few things right away. One, Jackson looks exactly like it's supposed to. Like this could be art from the making of the games and it wouldn't look any different.
The interesting thing: it looks like the Jackson we see at the beginning of "The Last of Us Part II," which makes sense. In the first game, Joel and Ellie don't exactly spend much time there. They just see it in the distance while doing some business on the outskirts of the town. It certainly seems that if the show is going through the trouble of building it up for the first season of the show, the characters will be spending some time in this location.
The Action in Jackson
There's a few things for fans to speculate about here. In the game, Jackson is the endpoint for this gruff smuggler and the tween girl he's escorting through the fungus zombie-infected landscape... or so the main characters think. It's the place they set out to find once the crap hits the fan, so it's notable that we see a Christmas tree in the production art. It's a great visual way to show the passage of time from the beginning of the journey to what the characters think/hope is the end. The story has other plans for them, but I do like it as a way to punctuate just how epic and long their journey has been.
Jackson is visited twice in the first game and is the home for the traumatized characters at the beginning of the second, so this could also mean we're getting a good look inside the walls of this town in the first season, so it's perfectly set up and ready to go when season 2 gets the go-ahead from HBO. That is, assuming that each season will perfectly break down the same narrative way as the games.
Either way, it's exciting to see this show — which is being run by "Chernobyl" creative mastermind (and everybody's favorite podcast grouch on "Scriptnotes") Craig Mazin — come together and the debut of the pilot episode can't come soon enough.
According to initial reports, production on HBO's "The Last of Us" will be going on until June 2022, with a premiere date for the series not officially on the books just yet. However, speculation has it bowing possibly by the end of next year.
The show stars "The Mandalorian" himself, Pedro Pascal, as Joel, and "Game of Thrones" vet Bella Ramsey as Ellie.