These delays have pushed the film back to 2021, likely due to the busy schedule of Tom Holland, who’s set to star as the protagonist, a young Nathan Drake. Mark Wahlberg is also set to appear as a younger Sully in the film and will act as a prequel to the games detailing how the two met.
Way back in 2008, Avi Arad and Sony announced that they would be developing a film adaptation of Naughty Dog’s highly popular Uncharted series. There was certainly a massive buzz around the film thanks to Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves released basically back to back and being well received. It’s now 2020 and the release of the movie is as likely as I am to pass my first year. What happened?
Will the Uncharted film rise from the fires of development hell like a phoenix or sink like a T-800? Sadly, all evidence seems to point to the latter. With several directors, multiple rewrites and over a decade in development, the entire project seems destined to fail. There is also the small issue of video game films having, for the most part, bad reputations. Even if this movie does reach the light of day, don’t hold your breath over it being any good.
The risk of tarnishing the spotless reputation of the franchise should be avoided.
George Bell
But at this point is anyone still interested in the film that has gradually bled out all hype due to its long development time? The games themselves are great and have more emphasis on the story over gameplay, so what’s the point of making a movie when the games have already been successful in telling the Nathan Drake story?
While a prequel would have been amazing, the risk of tarnishing the spotless reputation of the franchise should be avoided. Perhaps Sony should just put a cap on this one and make another Spider-Man villain origin film instead.
Featured image credit: Biography.com & IGDB
