Fans of Uncharted, the wildly successful PlayStation video game franchise, have seen yet another delay in the film adaptation of the game, as the project has lost its sixth director. Travis Knight (Bumblebee) left due to scheduling conflicts. While the film was set to go into production in early 2020, this delay will further set back the troubled project. Here’s a brief rundown of its history and why it’s taking so long to hit theaters.
The video game franchise Uncharted, which for many set the standard for adventure video games, follows Nathan Drake, a professional treasure hunter and purported descendent of Sir Francis Drake, as he seeks rumored historical treasures. Similar to Lara Croft of the Tomb Raider games, Drake encounters various antagonists and physical challenges throughout his adventures, and is also known for his roguish charm.
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune was released in 2007, and almost immediately rumors of a film adaptation circulated with Avi Arad, the executive producer behind many superhero films of the early 2000s (X-Men and Blade 2), developing the project in 2008. Nathan Fillion (Castle) began a social media campaign to assume the role of Drake, but when David O. Russell (The Fighter) was attached to direct in 2010, Mark Wahlberg was rumored to star. Over the next nine years, Neil Burger (Divergent), Seth Gordon (Baywatch), Shawn Levy (The Internship), Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane), and now Travis Knight have all been attached as directors.
Even more writers have been attached, and the proposed film has transitioned from a standard adaptation to an origin story. Not having a stable script or angle on how to best bring Nathan Drake to the screen hampered the production through most of its history until this most recent setback when scheduling commitments for the third installment of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man franchise conflicted with Knight’s schedule.
In a marketplace that is often unreceptive to film adaptations of video games – 2018’s Alicia Vikander-led Tomb Raider and 2016’s Assassin’s Creed featuring Michael Fassbender eked out profits based primarily on their foreign box office returns – getting the story for this adaptation right will be vital to the film’s marketability and artistic merit. Tom Holland is a box office draw, and the video game has a loyal fanbase, so while there is potential for a big return, such troubled production history doesn’t bode well for Uncharted’s fans.
