Famed director of Uncharted Amy Hennig and co-writer of EA's canceled Star Wars game Ragtag Todd Stashwick are working on a new AAA action/adventure game at Skydance Media. Hennig was known for helming the first three Uncharted and would've taken over the fourth game had she not departed developer Naughty Dog.
Following the success of Uncharted 3, Amy Hennig was making Uncharted 4 for about two years before suddenly leaving Naughty Dog. No explanation for Hennig's departure has ever been given, and rumors of her being forced out for internal reasons have since been debunked. Uncharted 4: A Thief's End was still largely the same as the first three games in structure, but characters Nadine and Sam were added and heavily reworked after Hennig's departure. The director went to go work at Visceral Games in order to direct an Uncharted-inspired Star Wars game called Project Ragtag, but it was canceled by EA and Visceral was shuttered.
Now, it appears Amy Hennig is ready to try her hand at AAA action/adventure once again. A while back, the Uncharted director formed Skydance New Media, a spinoff of a Hollywood production company responsible for major blockbusters like the recent Mission: Impossible films. Announced earlier in the week, Hennig and co-writer Todd Stashwick are now assembling a team of developers to help produce this new game, as reported by VGC.
Whether or not Hennig is trying to make something in the vein of Uncharted once again is currently unknown. However, given reports of what her Star Wars game at Visceral was about, it sounds like PlayStation won't be able to corner that style of blockbuster adventure game for long (barring Square Enix's Tomb Raider reboot trilogy, of course). Sony is reportedly trying to develop a new Uncharted game without Naughty Dog as the lead developer, so it's likely a good time for the genre to get new life in the form of a new franchise by the one who helped to modernize it.
A Skydance job listing mentions a vision of delivering premium action-adventure stories that captures the spirt of film, so the new game will likely have high production values and be very cinematic. Hennig proved with Uncharted that she can help create rich, three-dimensional characters that can be just as great as any cast on the silver screen. Her ability to translate something cinematic into something playable, without losing or watering down key elements of video games, is pretty remarkable. As of right now, though, it sounds like Skydance's upcoming game is in pre-production, so it may be a while before it surfaces with anything substantial.
Source: Todd Stashwick (via VGC)