Neil Druckmann Steps Away from The Last of Us TV Show to Focus on Game Development - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 July 2025 / 1,317 Views
Naughty Dog boss Neil Druckmann announced he is stepping away from The Last of Us HBO TV show to put his complete focus on Naughty Dog and game development.
"I've made the difficult decision to step away from my creative involvement in The Last of Us on HBO." said Druckmann.
"With work completed on season 2 and before any meaningful work starts on season 3, now is the right time for me to transition my complete focus to Naughty Dog and its future projects, including writing and directing our exciting next game, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, along with my responsibilities as Studio Head and Head of Creative.
"Co-creating the show has been a career highlight. It's been an honor to work alongside Craig Mazin to executive produce, direct and write on the last two seasons. I'm deeply thankful for the thoughtful approach and dedication the talented cast and crew took to adapting The Last of Us Part I and the continued adaptation of The Last of Us Part II."
Naughty Dog is currently developing Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet for the PlayStation 5.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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Good decision.
He did a fantastic job with the show but i rather see him focused on what he excels best which is video games.
Good for him,
Back to directing games
His story ends around here, from what I understand. Whoever takes over might not be as successful as the first two seasons, but they’ll likely have a good idea of where the story needs to go at a relatively fast pace.
Now if I may go off on a tangent: That’s one thing that a lot of people don’t understand: the velocity of the writing that needs to happen for TV shows. The writing has to be done, or mostly done, before production can even begin. And, he probably isn’t the guy suitable to do it at this point. Example of a misunderstanding: “D&D destroyed Game of Thrones” - no they didn’t, they adapted an unfinished story and it was wildly successful, and then they finished the story. GRR Martin will likely do a better story in the end, but he has significantly more time to do it - 14 years he’s worked on the recent book, and literally three decades for the whole thing so far, and without the worry about all the other elements that go into producing a TV show (cast availability, cast aging, crew, set designs, etc…). Novel writers create better stories, but the process is usually a lot longer than a script, unless you’re a crazy discipline drafter like Asimov or Stephen King, or a formulaic outliner who ignores theme and character development (like RL Stine).
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