BALDUR'S GATE TV series in development at HBO from LAST OF US team

HBO is developing a TV series based on the Baldur's Gate video game series, set in the Forgotten Realms fantasy world and Dungeons & Dragons multiverse. The TV show will be set shortly after the events of the video game Baldur's Gate III and will see some returning characters from the game alongside new faces.

If Lump the Enlightened is not in the TV show, we riot.

Craig Mazin, the showrunner of The Last of Us and Chernobyl, is lining this up to be his next project once work on the third and now-confirmed-to-be-final season of that show is completed. Mazin will be the main writer, showrunner and producer, with Chris Perkins from Wizards of the Coast serving as consultant. At this stage, none of the team from Larian Studios, who produced Baldur's Gate III, are involved, and it appears that Forgotten Realms creator Ed Greenwood has also not been consulted on the project so far. However, some of the voice cast from the video game may return, either voicing or playing their characters where that makes sense, or in new roles if not.

Mazin, a noted gamer, has completed Baldur's Gate III more than once, having put over 1,000 hours into the game and completing it on the challenging "honour mode." He is also an avid tabletop gamer, having run ongoing D&D campaigns for over fifteen years straight.

Baldur's Gate is apparently designed to share continuity with The Forgotten Realms, the Shawn Levy-produced show in development over at HBO's now (or soon-to-be) sister streamer, Netflix.

With the final season of Last of Us not likely to land before mid-2027, the Baldur's Gate show may be lucky to hit screens before the end of the decade.

The Last of Us: Season 1

A fungal mass infection has overrun much of the world, killing billions and turning others into mindless, ravaging creatures. Smuggler Joel is tasked by a group known as the Fireflies with escorting 14-year-old Ellie across America to safety. The Fireflies believe that Ellie's genes hold the key to a cure for the infection.

The Last of Us was a 2013 video game from Naughty Dog, the creators of the Uncharted franchise. The game was a massive smash hit success, attracting praise for its emotional storytelling, dialogue, combat, characterisation and atmosphere. Its 2020 sequel was somewhat more divisive but still mostly well-received.

Inevitably, moves began to adapt the story as either a film or TV show. After several failed attempts, the project found a home at HBO with Chernobyl writer-producer Craig Mazin at the helm, joined by the game's original creator and writer Neil Druckmann.

The project still faced an uphill battle to succeed. TV has been awash with post-apocalyptic survival stories for well over a decade, with The Walking Dead (2010-22) being the most successful example, spawning multiple spin-offs. Other shows have had less success, with Y: The Last Man (2021) failing to gain much ground and only lasting one season. More notably, video game adaptations still had a long track record of failure in other mediums, Netflix's Arcane being the biggest exception (although that show benefitted from really only using characters and background lore, and crafting a new story).

The Last of Us once again argues that HBO has the Midas touch, emerging as easily the best live action video game adaptation to date. It helps that the series is based on a linear video game with a very linear story, divided itself into sections that can easily be lifted out and converted into episodes. It also helps that the source material itself is so strong.

The biggest success is in casting: Pedro Pascal can play "adopted grumpy gunman protector-daddy" in his sleep at this point, but still brings his A-game. Bella Ramsey doesn't hugely resemble the Ellie from the games, but has the requisite attitude, and Ramsey and Pascal have a great relationship and energy (possibly inspired by both being Game of Thrones casualties). Other actors rotate in and out of the road trip and do a great job, with Nick Offerman delivering the best guest performance of the season as Bill. More under-used is the normally-outstanding Melanie Lynskey, who isn't given much to as Kathleen (and from what we do see, it feels like her Yellowjackets character - also a well-meaning psychopath - has been airdropped in for five minutes). The likes of Merle Dandridge, John Hannah, Anna Torv, Gabriel Luna, Murray Bartlett and Rutina Wesley all provide excellent support.

The structure of the series mirrors that of the games, but also breaks away for format-busting experiments. The third episode, Long, Long Time, might be the season highlight as it follows libertarian prepper Bill's attempts to survive in the aftermath of the outbreak, and it turns from comedy to action to romance with conviction. Left Behind (based on an expansion to the game) is an excellent flashback episode focusing on Ellie's history and what led her to joining forces with the Fireflies.

Where the series falters a little is in some of the "normal" episodes, where the pacing can flag and where the show sometimes hesitates in how it deals with post-apocalyptic/zombie tropes that the likes of The Walking Dead have employed a dozen times over. A loved one is infected and needs to be killed/is allowed to make a noble sacrifice? Yup, several times. Have the tough times have made some people resort to being murders/rapists/cannibals/murderous rapist-cannibals? Oh yeah. At the merest sign of trouble, did about 30% of the population turn into authoritarian lunatics instantly? Of course. To its credit, the show does its best to make these well-trodden plotlines work, sometimes successfully, at other times less so.

This impacts on the pacing, with, once the flashback episodes are removed, seven episodes to tell its story and it still feels a little too long, which is odd given that the show runs to only about half the length of the first game. Still, the game can eat up a lot of its time in combat and stealth sequences which the show can't, at least not so easily.

But if the pacing is sometimes sluggish, there are also excellent moments of character development. It's also refreshing to see an adaptation not afraid to adapt the source material. Entire scenes from the game are faithfully recreated in the show, occasionally dialogue-perfect. Other storylines are changed to accommodate the show's greater sense of realism: fighting off the type of numbers that Ellie and Joel encounter in the game would look silly, or drag out too much. It's a judgement call in each case and, for the most part, the show makes good calls. After a bunch of recent adaptations that seemed to be terrified of their own source material (The Rings of Power comes to mind), it's good to see one more in conversation with it.

The show also makes good calls when it comes to CG. The increasingly all-invasive use of CGI in modern TV and film has become tedious, leading to fake-looking backdrops all over the place. This show certainly uses CG in places, but it is more restrained and, as a result, more convincing. Arguably, the show even fails to use CG in moments when maybe it should have (painting out the massive mountains that have inexplicably appeared around Boston might have been a good idea). The CG-animated cordyceps monsters are extremely well-realised, and used sparingly to good effect.

Excellent performances, good action and strong character arcs make the first season of The Last of Us (****) a winner. Occasionally sluggish pacing and sometimes questionable story turns that seem rooted more in video game logic than actual logic prevent the show from being an unqualified success, but these issues are minor. The Last of Us proves that adult, intelligent and interesting adaptations of video games are possible, and hopefully more will follow.

The TV show is available to watch on HBO or Max in the US and most overseas territories, and on Now TV in the UK.

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HBO's LAST OF US adaptation to launch on 15 January

HBO's adaptation of the video game The Last of Us will launch on 15 January 2023.

The TV show's first season will consist of nine episodes and is based on the first game in the series. The show stars Pedro Pascal as Joel and Bella Ramsey as Ellie, two survivors of an apocalyptic event caused by the arising of zombie-like monsters. They travel across America, linking up with other survivors (friendly and not), avoiding the "clickers" along the way.

The show also stars Gabriel Luna, Merle Dandridge, Nico Parker, Murray Bartlett, Nick Offerman and Anna Torv, whilst the original game voice actors Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson will also appear.

Chernobyl writer-producer Craig Mazin is co-showrunner of the project, alongside the video game's creator and head writer, Neil Druckmann.

HBO drops trailer for THE LAST OF US

HBO has dropped its first full-length trailer for The Last of Us, its adaptation of the hit video game.

The Last of Us stars Pedro Pascal as Joel and Bella Ramsey as Ellie and is co-written by Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) and Neil Druckmann (who wrote and directed the two video games in the series). The series is expected to debut on HBO in the USA in early 2023.

HBO greenlights LAST OF US TV series

HBO has greenlit a live-action TV series based on the Last of Us video game series.

HBO announced they had put the project into development back in March, with Chernobyl writer-showrunner Craig Mazin developing the series alongside Neil Druckmann, the senior writer on the game series. Mazin will run the new show whilst Druckmann will advise, produce and write, his duties at Naughty Dog Studios permitting.

The game and TV series are both set in a post-apocalyptic world where a toxic fungus has infected millions of people and turned them into violent monsters. The storyline follows Joel, a middle-aged survivor, who finds himself protecting a young girl named Ellie.

The original Last of Us (2013) was a huge hit. Developed by Naughty Dog Studios, who also developed the Uncharted series (a film version of which is currently shooting), the game sold over 13 million copies. The Last of Us, Part II was released in June this year and has already sold over 4 million copies to date. The sequel seemed to end the storyline fairly definitively, but Naughty Dog are reportedly considering a third game (which maybe a prequel or spin-off rather than a straight sequel) due to the success of the first two games.

Video game adaptations were once seen as a fool's errand in both television and film circles, but a growing number of successful transitions have made HBO - never shy to take on a challenge - keener to try out the idea. Showtime are also deep in production on a TV series based on the Halo series of video games.

The Last of Us will likely enter production in 2021 for a 2022 premiere.

Eli Roth and CHERNOBYL writer team up on BORDERLANDS film

Eli Roth, the director of films including Hostel, Cabin Fever and The House with a Clock in its Walls, is developing a film based on the Borderlands video game franchise from Gearbox Studios. Chernobyl writer Craig Mazin has written the latest draft of the script.

Borderlands is a science fiction first-person shooter series, noted for its offbeat humour and focus on co-operative team gameplay. The series so far consists of Borderlands (2009), Borderlands 2 (2012), Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel (2014), Tales from the Borderlands (2014-15) and Borderlands 3 (2019). The series has sold 58 million copies to date, making it one of the biggest-selling video game series of the last decade.

The news has come in the wake of a change of fortunes for video game adaptations. Previously seen as a doomed endeavour, several recent video game-to-movie adaptations have enjoyed greater success than any previous attempts, including Detective Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog, whilst the Castlevania TV series on Netflix has enjoyed significant success.

The current plan is to fast-track Borderlands to start shooting later this year for a possible late 2021/early 2022 release date.

Wertzone Classics: Chernobyl

At 01:23:40, Moscow Time, on 26 April 1986, the core of Number. 4 Reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station in the Soviet Union exploded. A vast fire took hold and started belching plumes of radioactive smoke into the air. Radioactive particles eventually fell as far afield as northern Scandinavia and Britain. In the aftermath of the disaster, nuclear experts were sent to the site to lead containment and clean-up efforts, among them Valery Legasov. Legasov's actions and those of the scientists with him helped prevent a turbine steam explosion of much greater proportions, and allowed the clean-up to proceed. But Legasov's investigation revealed a fatal design flaw in the reactor design, one still used at a dozen other stations across the USSR, and his struggle to warn the world and lead to reform was challenged by a bureaucracy where accountability and passing the buck are the norm, and truth and lies were seen as only theoretical concepts.

Chernobyl is a co-production between HBO and Sky TV which attempts to recreate the worst nuclear accident in human history, explain why it happened and what happened afterwards. Written by Craig Mazin (the Scary Movie and Hangover franchises, believe it or not) and directed by Johan Renck (Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Halt and Catch Fire, and music videos for New Order, Madonna, Beyonce and David Bowie), Chernobyl is an impeccably-researched series which veers between outright body horror, taut character drama and hauntingly beautiful scenes rich in atmosphere and melancholy.

The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 was one of the defining moments of the era. Years later, Mikhail Gorbachev admitted that it may have been the event that marked the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union, as the implacable visage of Soviet engineering competence was fatally cracked. Following the Three Mile Island incident in the United States, it caused the world to reassess its relationship with nuclear power and dramatically slowed the building of new reactors. To what extent this was an overreaction is something the series itself debates, with it noted that Soviet-era reactors lacked the containment vessels and other safety features enjoyed by Western designs that would have prevented the same kind of accident from occurring.

The series is focused on the real-life character of Valery Legasov, perfectly played by Jared Harris. Harris has been one of the most reliable and astute actors of modern times, fantastic in Mad Men, The Crown, Fringe, The Expanse, The Terror and many, many other productions, but he's not been a household name. Chernobyl should change that, and if Harris doesn't walk off with a ton of awards, there is no justice in the world. His more famous co-stars Stellan Skarsgård and Emily Watson are also utterly fantastic, and scenes between these three actors are worth their weight in uranium. The entire cast is excellent, with Paul Ritter (best-known in the UK for his comic role on Friday Night Dinner) particularly making the most of his small but crucial role as Anatoly Dyatlov, the assistant chief engineer whose bull-headed approach was at least partially responsible for causing the chain of events leading to the explosion.

The five episodes are divided broadly between two narrative strands. The first and most consistent focuses on Legasov's investigation, aided by Ulana Khomyuk (Watson), a composite character of a dozen or so scientists who worked on the disaster, and the attempts by Boris Shcherbina (Skarsgård) to give them political cover and allow them to work. The relationship between Legasov and Shcherbina is fascinating, moving slowly from mutual dislike and antagonism to respect and support with total conviction.

The second narrative strand is more of an anthology, following several characters whose lives are impacted by the disaster. These include Lyudmilla Ignatenko (Jessie Buckley), the pregnant wife of a fireman who works on the blaze on the first night and is subsequently moved to a hospital of horrors in Moscow; Andrei Glukhov (Alex Ferns), the head of a gang of miners drafted in to help contain the damage; and Pavel (Barry Keoghan), a young soldier called in to help clean out the evacuation zone of civilians. These subplots allow the sheer scale and scope of the disaster to be understood, and the way it affected millions of people.

The decision to start the first episode at the very moment of the explosion and then delve into the events afterwards feels a bit odd at first, but it turns out to be a stroke of utter genius, as it means we know about as much as Legasov as to what's happened, and learn about preceding events when he does. It's only in the finale episode, when Legasov has a full picture of events that the drama rewinds to the hours and days before the explosion and counts down to the event, allowing the sheer magnitude of the disaster to become more apparent to an audience who now knows that graphite-tipped fuel control rods are a bad idea and the significance of the safety test being run at the time of the accident.

Beautifully-written, impeccably-directed, cast to perfection and with a timely message on the intersection of science, the environment, facts, opinions, propaganda and the truth, Chernobyl (*****) sits comfortably alongside the likes of Threads and Edge of Darkness as fantastic examples of drama acting also acting as a powerful warning. It is available to watch on HBO in the United States and on Sky and Now TV in the UK. The Chernobyl Podcast, which goes behind the scenes of each episode in detail, is also essential listening.