17-year-old English actress Maisie Williams, best known for her role as the courageous Arya Stark on HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” has been in the running to play Ellie in the video game adaptation The Last of Us, and has now used the magic word “Yes” in talking with IGN about how her casting is progressing.
Although her name was dropped by producers at this summer’s San Diego Comic-Con, according to Williams she was not familiar with the action-horror game franchise until fans on Twitter–including Ashley Johnson, original voice of Ellie–fan casted her for the role, so she got her American agent to set up a meeting.
“I had a meeting with [producer] Sam Raimi and [game director] Neil Druckmann,” says Williams. “They said they’d love ‘if you would moderate the panel at Comic-Con, but you’d need to watch the walk-through and know your s*** because there are massive fans of this and we wouldn’t want it to go wrong.’ I was doing so much work for ‘Thrones’ that I didn’t want to half-arse do it, so I said I’m not going to [moderate]. They said fine, but they’re gonna announce they had talks. So the way it was left is they want me to do it, and I want to do it. But there’s no script, no director, and no anything else. So at this moment, it’s looking like, ‘Yes,’ but it’s still such early days. If they make it in 30 years, they can’t have a 40-year-old Ellie. So at the moment, it’s looking good, and I’d love to do it. Hell yeah.”
The Last of Us follows hardened survivor Joel and Ellie, a young and capable girl, on their journey through a radically transformed world. Set twenty years after an infectious pandemic spread by the cordyceps virus ravaged the course of humanity, these two people, who were brought together by chance, must make life-altering decisions in order to survive. The Last of Us explores themes of survival, loyalty, love, and redemption in an emotionally charged expedition across a post-epidemic United States.
Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann will pen the screenplay and co-produce the film along with Co-Presidents’ Evan Wells and Christophe Balestra, Game Director Bruce Straley, and Sam Raimi via their Ghost House Pictures banner.
