I think The Last of Us is the only truly new, groundbreaking achievement the article lists. And by groundbreaking, I mean it managed to both carve out a space artistically in the “prestige TV” category, while also breaking into the pop-culture zeitgeist, as the article notes.
You’re right that Arcane was amazing, but it mainly caught the attention of game and animation fans. The Last of Us may be the property that finally convinced studios to take video game adaptations seriously and stop giving them out to commercially promising but artistically bereft filmmakers like Paul Anderson.
When Brandon Sanderson has talked about possible screen adaptations of his books, he’s started to hear people talking about an Arcane-style animated adaptation as an option they’d like. He’s mentioned that the unfortunate reality of it is that Arcane’s budget ($10 million an episode) does not match its audience - the large majority of Arcane viewers are existing League fans, and it doesn’t get the new/outside-viewer audience that a lot of producers would want to see.
I think The Last of Us is the only truly new, groundbreaking achievement the article lists. And by groundbreaking, I mean it managed to both carve out a space artistically in the “prestige TV” category, while also breaking into the pop-culture zeitgeist, as the article notes.
You’re right that Arcane was amazing, but it mainly caught the attention of game and animation fans. The Last of Us may be the property that finally convinced studios to take video game adaptations seriously and stop giving them out to commercially promising but artistically bereft filmmakers like Paul Anderson.
When Brandon Sanderson has talked about possible screen adaptations of his books, he’s started to hear people talking about an Arcane-style animated adaptation as an option they’d like. He’s mentioned that the unfortunate reality of it is that Arcane’s budget ($10 million an episode) does not match its audience - the large majority of Arcane viewers are existing League fans, and it doesn’t get the new/outside-viewer audience that a lot of producers would want to see.