Video game movie adaptations have a bad name in Hollywood, but there’s always hope that some visionary will come along and suitably translate our favorite games for the screen. The latest popular video game franchise to get the big-screen treatment is Uncharted. Sony Pictures has been developing this adaptation for years.
At one point, they even asked Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg to write the script. As it stands, the movie will star Tom Holland as a younger Drake and it’s on track for a 2020 release. So, here is Everything We Know (So Far) About Tom Holland’s Uncharted Movie.
It’s a prequel to the games
The Uncharted movie will reportedly be a prequel set before the events of the game series. Tom Holland has been cast to play a younger version of Nathan Drake in the lead role and the story will center around how he first became close friends with Sully.
There’s a chance that if the movie’s a big hit and it kickstarts a franchise, the movies will eventually begin taking their stories from the games. With Holland continuing to age like any young star, he’ll be old enough to play the Nathan Drake that we know and love from the games before too long.
Travis Knight is directing
Although it was initially announced that 10 Cloverfield Lane’s Dan Trachtenberg would be directing the Uncharted movie, he has since departed from the project and been replaced by Travis Knight.
Knight got his start in animation with movies like Kubo and the Two Strings, but in recent years, he’s moved into the realm of live-action filmmaking with Bumblebee, widely regarded by critics to be the only good movie in the Transformers franchise. Bumblebee quickly made Knight one of the most sought-after directors in Hollywood. He’s also in line to helm the long-gestating big-screen reboot of The Six Billion Dollar Man.
It’ll be released on December 18, 2020
Uncharted is set to hit theaters on December 18, 2020. The holiday season has always been a prime period for Hollywood releases, but Uncharted will face some stiff competition in that particular holiday season.
On that same release date, Uncharted will face off against Steven Spielberg’s new remake of the musical West Side Story; Eddie Murphy’s long-awaited Coming to America sequel, Coming 2 America; and Denis Villeneuve’s star-studded re-adaptation of the classic Frank Herbert sci-fi novel Dune. The next week, The Croods 2 will join it at multiplexes worldwide. Tom Holland is one of the world’s biggest movie stars right now, so Uncharted should be safe.
Tom Holland will play a young Nathan Drake
Thanks to his turn as Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Tom Holland has quickly become one of the most popular movie stars in the world. He’s capitalized on this and signed on to a bunch of upcoming projects. Next summer, his voice will be heard alongside Chris Pratt’s in Pixar’s fantasy drama Onward.
He’s starring in the Russo brothers’ true crime drama Cherry and Doug Liman’s young-adult sci-fi adaptation Chaos Walking. In Uncharted, Holland will play a younger incarnation of Nathan Drake. Although many fans wanted to see Nathan Fillion take on the role of Nathan Drake in an Uncharted movie, there have been few complaints about Holland’s casting.
Sony retooled Uncharted specifically to cast Tom Holland
According to Deadline, Sony retooled their entire Uncharted movie franchise just to suit Tom Holland. The studio’s chairman, Tom Rothman, was reportedly so pleased with the actor’s lead performance in an early cut of Spider-Man: Homecoming that he saw (bear in mind that this was a couple of years ago) that he changed the whole premise of the Uncharted movie to revolve around a younger take on Nathan Drake.
This meant a total overhaul of the script and the previsualization for this big-budget holiday tentpole – all so that the studio could give the young, talented, and deserving Holland another franchise.
The studio is considering Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey to play Sully
The film adaptation of Uncharted will focus on the foundation of Nathan Drake’s relationship with Victor “Sully” Sullivan. In the games, Sully is a mentor to Drake, and has become sort of a father figure for him. We’ve already seen Tom Holland develop this kind of on-screen father-son bond with Robert Downey, Jr. in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The role of Sully in Uncharted has yet to be cast, but the studio is reportedly considering Woody Harrelson, Chris Hemsworth, Matthew McConaughey, and Chris Pine. Hemsworth and Pine are two of Hollywood’s favorite Chrises, while Harrelson played a similar character last year in Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Uncharted will be PlayStation Productions’ first wide release
Uncharted will be the first wide theatrical release of PlayStation Productions, the film production arm of Sony Interactive Entertainment. The company’s movie branch was previously called PlayStation Originals, which digitally released a Heavenly Sword movie that didn’t make much of a splash and theatrically released a Ratchet & Clank movie that failed at the box office despite its relatively low budget.
PlayStation Originals has since been rebranded as PlayStation Productions and its first major release will be the Uncharted movie. The newly reformed company is also working on a long-form TV adaptation of the Twisted Metal series of vehicular combat games.
There have been dozens of script drafts
Over the course of its many years in development hell, the Uncharted movie has seen a number of writers come and go, each providing a new draft of the script.
These writers include: Cormac and Marianne Wibberley, the writing team behind the National Treasure franchise; Mark Boal, the Oscar-winning screenwriter behind The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty; Josh Oppenheimer and Dean Donnelly, who wrote the big-budget action-adventure movie Sahara; David Guggenheim, who created the political thriller series Designated Survivor; and Kyle Ward, the guy who wrote Hitman: Agent 47, the second movie adaptation to botch the Hitman video games.
The script being used was written by Joe Carnahan and Rafe Judkins
The latest version of the script for the Uncharted movie was written by Joe Carnahan, who directed 2010’s big-screen reboot of The A-Team and 2011’s Liam Neeson vs. wolves thriller The Grey. Rafe Judkins, a TV writer who has worked on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Netflix’s Hemlock Grove over the years, now shares a writing credit with Carnahan.
Judkins has been hired to either punch up Carnahan’s existing script or collaborate with him on the rewrites. Either way, the script that the current Uncharted production is using, after countless drafts penned by other writers, was written by Joe Carnahan and Rafe Judkins.
It’ll be more faithful than David O. Russell’s original vision
Silver Linings Playbook’s David O. Russell was the first director to be attached to the movie adaptation of Uncharted. His initial vision for the movie was described as a very loose adaptation of the game. Russell would’ve retconned Sully to be Drake’s biological father and he would’ve brought in another character, an uncle, who would’ve made a comedic double act with Sully.
Russell hoped that Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci would play these characters. That version sounds dreadful and would’ve instantly alienated the Uncharted fan base. The studio canned that version and they’re working on a more faithful version with Travis Knight.
- Uncharted Release Date: 2022-02-18
