HBO confirms The Last of Us TV show release date following HBO Max leak

HBO has officially set the release date for the upcoming The Last of Us TV show.

The nine-episode first season of the highly anticipated video game adaptation begins streaming on HBO Max Sunday 15 January 2023. As with other HBO-produced shows, UK viewers will be able to watch the series’ debut in the early hours Monday 16 January 2023 on Sky Atlantic and Now.

Confirmation of The Last of Us TV show’s release date comes via HBO itself, which accidentally revealed the news (opens in new tab) a day earlier due to a rogue description in the HBO Max preview listing of the series.

A big-budget adaptation of developer Naughty Dog’s groundbreaking PlayStation title – which, incidentally, is our top pick for the best video games of the 2010s – HBO’s TV show The Last of Us will also feature elements of its sequel, The Last of Us 2, and occasionally “deviates greatly” from the source material, showrunner Neil Druckmann has said.

HBO’s official synopsis for the series reads:[The Last of Us] takes place 20 years after modern civilization was destroyed. Joel, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle Ellie, a 14-year-old girl, out of a cramped quarantine zone. What starts as a small job quickly turns into a brutal, heartbreaking journey, as they both have to traverse the US and depend on each other to survive.”

The Mandalorian himself, Pedro Pascal, plays Joel on the show, with fellow Game of Thrones alumnus Bella Ramsey in tow as Ellie. Merle Dandridge, Nick Offerman, Gabriel Luna, Storm Reid, Anna Torv and Nico Parker have also all been confirmed. Meanwhile, the original voice actors from The Last of Us, Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson, who voice Joel and Ellie, will also appear in some capacity.

There is no confirmation yet on how many seasons HBO is planning for the series. However, Baker has provided a vague window of “three, four seasons” needed to match the game’s story beats at an appropriate pace — rather than limiting the story to a single, rushed season.

“I think you can tell this story much more effectively every now and then because you try to summarize that 16-hour experience in [a few] hour is impossible … it goes beyond the point of distillation, into reduction,” Baker said in an interview with GameSpot (opens in new tab). “I think I can do this once in a while and go, ‘We’re doing this for three or four seasons, for example’ and be able to tell almost 1:1 [the story of the game] offers a great opportunity for more people to experience it.”

HBO has casually referred to “future seasons” after an initial first season, though any continuations will likely depend on the success of season one. In any case, we’ve gathered everything you need to know about the TV show The Last of Us on a dedicated page, which we’ll update as we approach the series’ debut on January 15.