HBO’s The Last of Us makes history with Emmy nominations

First live-action video game adaptation to be considered for major industry award
HBO’s The Last of Us makes history with Emmy nominations
HBO’s The Last of Us makes history with Emmy nominations /

The nominations for the Emmys 2023 are up and HBO’s The Last of Us is already one of the big winners with a total of 24 nominations. Even if the show based on Naughty Dog’s video game IP wouldn’t take home a single one of these awards, it’s already written history by being considered for them – no other live-action adaptation of a video game has ever come this far.

Among other categories, The Last of Us is nominated for best drama series, competing against the likes of Better Call Saul, Succession, Andor, and House of the Dragon. Both Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, who play the lead roles of Joel and Ellie, are nominated for best lead actor and best lead actress in a drama series. The show’s guest roles and several technical aspects are up for awards as well including directing, casting, costuming, and music.

Our own Kirk McKeand called HBO’s The Last of Us the first video game adaptation that can stand on its own feet in his review of the series, emphasizing a point that many industry insiders have also stressed: It’s a brilliant character drama regardless of whether you’ve played the game or not.

The first season of Arcane, set in the universe of League of Legends, which ran on Netflix, won the Emmy for best animated program in 2022, setting the stage for The Last of Us’ remarkable success in the live-action department.

Overall, 2023 has been a good year for video game adaptations so far, with The Super Mario Bros. Movie grossing around $1.3 billion at the box office and becoming one of the best video game movies of all time – though Mario’s fun big screen adventure likely won’t see the same amount of award considerations as The Last of Us.

Aside from The Last of Us’ triumph, the Emmy nominations for 2023 contained another huge surprise.


Published
Marco Wutz
MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg