Like it or not, the Uncharted movie is still marching towards its December 18, 2020 release date. The movie has lingered in development hell for some time, but the project’s current director seems to have a clear plan.
Dan Trachtenberg, who also helmed the excellent 10 Cloverfield Lane has revealed that he doesn’t just want to go over the stories that the four Uncharted games have already covered. Instead, he’s keen to tell his own story with Tom Holland, who’ll be playing a younger version of Drake.
In an interview with GamesRadar, Trachtenberg said that he’s not into the idea of simply recreating the games, and has turned down a number of different versions of the story, presumably because they’re too close to Drake’s digital escapades. Understandably, he feels that simply copying one of the games wouldn’t be the best experience, especially for those of us who’ve already lived those adventures.
He explained:
I have been approached with different versions of this tale and have always been not that interested in it because I really don’t want to trace the game. I didn’t really feel like it was at all worthy of making a video game adaptation, [if] we’re just gonna copy what the game is and just serve people a lesser experience than what they’ve experienced in such an incredible way.
Trachtenberg seems so confident in the work that’s being done on the Uncharted movie, that he even suggested Naughty Dog would probably want to adapt its story if the studio ever chose to make another Uncharted game starring Nathan and Sully, which is a bold claim.
Sony revealed back in 2017 that Spider-Man star (and pure human being) Tom Holland would star in the Uncharted movie as a younger Nathan Drake, in a story set before the events of the first game in the franchise. If it can’t be Nathan Fillion, I’ll gladly take Holland.
No other casting announcements have been made yet, but if we don’t get Tom Hanks as Sully, I swear to God I will riot. It’d also be nice to see Nolan North, who played Drake in the video games, have a role of some kind – without him, Uncharted wouldn’t have the heart it does.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.