Project Spores is an upcoming fan film inspired by The Last of Us, and the crew behind it just dropped the first short teaser.
The film's YouTube channel describes Project Spores as "a collaborative project bringing cosplayers and creatives together to produce a series of photoshoots and a fan film based around The Last of Us Series by Naughty Dog." It sounds like it will roll out in stages, with a mix of shorts and behind-the-scenes stuff paving the way to the finale. It's also a mixed-media project, and I'm not just talking about the artistry of the physical cosplays.
"Through both video and photos we will be exploring the different characters and the details of their extraordinary lives outside of what we see in the games," the Project Spores crew says. "Whilst we will be releasing a lot of varied content on our socials, we'll ultimately be releasing a final 'fan film'."
Join a group of cosplayers and creatives as we aim to explore the characters from The Last of Us through a series of videos and photography. Here's a small preview of our first photoshoot with @Carlos_Adama, with much more yet come. pic.twitter.com/FcrWHZMV9wMay 26, 2021
The first teaser for Project Spores is a brief 15-second look at some of the actors and cosplayers in action. Ellie and Dina are the focus, but we also see recreations of a few scenes and locales from The Last of Us 2 and a proper Clicker, all set to that all-important acoustic guitar backing. It's certainly captured the overall vibe of The Last of Us, and it'll be interesting to see how Project Spores evolves.
The fan film doesn't have an official timeline or release date just yet, presumably it was only officially unveiled this month. Funnily enough, this puts it roughly neck-and-neck with the official The Last of Us TV show, which is scheduled to start filming next month. It's also come on the heels of the original game's eighth anniversary, which co-creator Bruce Straley marked with a thoughtful discussion on the game's impact – and you'd be hard-pressed to find more convincing evidence of a game's impact than a group of fans inspired to make their own short film.
It may or may not be tied to The Last of Us, but we do know that Naughty Dog is working on some sort of standalone multiplayer game.
