The Last of Us filming shuts down 8 Avenue, attracts excited crowd

It’s no secret filming for HBO’s The Last of Us has stirred up some excitement in Calgary.

On Thursday, 8 Avenue SW between 5 Street and 6 Street was transformed into a moss-filled, rusted out, dirty, post-apocalyptic landscape.

Filming brought traffic to a halt for the morning commute down 5 Street as drivers and pedestrians tried to catch a quick glimpse of The Mandalorian star Pedro Pascal.

“I played this game when I was a kid, so I found it pretty funny that it would employ me seven years later and also the fact that it’s huge compared to the CBC shows,” said one production assistant CityNews spoke with on set. “I mean we were on $10 million budgets but this is beyond that, like times a thousand.”

Another worker CityNews talked to described how the entire set they built for Thursday was for one scene of Pedro Pascal’s character Joel to drive down a stretch of road. And that’s about it.

Still, that didn’t stop people from piling up on the corner of 5 Street and 8 Avenue to try and see some filming in action.

Another family visiting Calgary from the United Kingdom had no idea filming was taking place and it caught them by surprise to see parts of the Downtown Core in shambles.

“We were walking through it, and like, you see all of the street completely normal, then suddenly you see graffiti on the walls, you see all these abandoned cars, you see rubble everywhere, and you say ‘what in eternity has happened here?'”

Filming along this stretch of road is due to wrap up sometime Thursday evening before the cast moves back to the studio for the next few days to continue filming.

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