Skip to main content

Maisie Williams says The Last of Us movie deal is ‘looking good’

maisie williams says last us movie deal looking good arya stark
Back in October, Game of Thrones actress Maisie Williams confirmed that she’d had talks about starring in a movie based on the hit survival horror game The Last of Us. While we haven’t received much in the way of updates on the project — or her potential starring role in it — Williams recently indicated that things are indeed moving along in a positive direction.

“At this moment, it’s looking like, ‘Yes,’ but it’s still such early days,” Williams told IGN about the status of the film. “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.”

Recommended Videos

The 17-year-old actress, who’s best-known for playing Arya Stark on the popular HBO series, also offered some insight about the surprise mention of her name at San Diego Comic-Con this year when producer Sam Raimi and The Last of Us game director Neil Druckmann were discussing the film during a panel. Williams confessed that she hadn’t heard of the game until people started mentioning her as a potential lead for a live-action adaptation, and she then had her agent contact the movie’s creative team to express her interest.

“I had a meeting with Sam Raimi and Neil Druckmann,” said 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 shit 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,” she explained. “So I said I’m not going to [moderate]. They said fine, but they’re going to announce they had talks [with me]. 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.”

While there doesn’t seem to have been a lot of movement on the film, it certainly seems as if Williams is all but assured of landing the role if cameras begin rolling in the near future. Druckmann is currently writing the screenplay for the film, which follows a young girl and a battle-hardened survivor as they navigate the country 20 years after a frightening epidemic has turned much of the human population into monstrous creatures.

Rick Marshall
A veteran journalist with more than two decades of experience covering local and national news, arts and entertainment, and…
Why The Last of Us is better as a TV show than a video game
Pedro Pascal with his finger to his mouth telling someone to be quiet in a scene from The Last of Us on HBO Max.

HBO's series The Last of Us has proven to be one of the most popular and well-crafted TV shows in recent memory, which has helped dispel the stigma toward video game adaptations. But naturally, many people armed with their keyboards have deconstructed the series and made heavy comparisons to the acclaimed video game it is based on.

While some may prefer the game over the show, the TV series has arguably improved it in multiple aspects, including in terms of plot, characters, visuals, and overall mainstream appeal. The series has finished its first season, and with another on the way, there is already proof that The Last of Us is better off as a TV show.
The show focuses more on the narrative

Read more
Forget season 2: We can’t wait for season 3 and 4 of The Last of Us
Joel and Ellie look at something in The Last of Us.

This article contains spoilers for season 1 of The Last of Us.

HBO's The Last of Us recently concluded its terrific first season on Sunday night. The series has already been renewed for a second season, which will be developed from the video game The Last of Us Part II. However, showrunners Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) and Neil Druckmann (Uncharted) revealed the second season would not cover the entirety of Part II and they need a third and potentially fourth season to complete the story.

Read more
The best characters in The Last of Us season 1, ranked
Ellie and Joel stand beside each other in the season one finale of The Last of Us.

Now that we've seen the entire first season, it's safe to say that The Last of Us is going to be remembered as one of the great shows in recent memory. While the show's story has been deeply compelling from the jump, what got most people invested in it was the wealth of great characters that exist in this universe.

In addition to the memorable season 1 The Last of Us cameos, the show had a cast of characters that were among TV's best. As difficult as it was to narrow it down to just 10, these are the characters from the show's first season that have stuck with us the most.

Read more