Well, it's another year and another pushed-back release date for 'Uncharted'.
Where to begin with this? So, the videogame adaptation was first announced in 2008 - that's right, 2008 - by Avi Arad, one of the brains behind Marvel Studios before Disney bought it up. In 2010, David O. Russell was signed on to direct the movie, with Mark Wahlberg expected to play Nathan Drake.
That, of course, never happened and then 'Limitless' director Neil Burger was drafted in to give it another go. That went nowhere, and he soon dropped out only to be replaced by Seth Rogen for maybe five minutes, before he bailed out of it as well.
In 2016, eight years after it was first announced, Joe Carnahan and Shawn Levy from 'Stranger Things' were attached to write and direct 'Uncharted'. They left soon after, with Tom Holland then being signed on to play Nathan Drake while Mark Wahlberg had aged out of the role.
In came Dan Trachtenberg, who directed '10 Cloverfield Lane' and got his start directing a short movie based on the puzzle videogame 'Portal'. He left after a short while and was then replaced by 'Bumblebee' director Travis Knight in December of 2019.
Well, Travis Knight soon left, citing scheduling conflicts and that brings us to right now where Sony has pushed back the release date for 'Uncharted' to 2021 while they try to convince another director to have a go. Currently, 'Zombieland' director Ruben Fleischer is top of the list to replace Travis Knight according to Deadline, but at this stage, who cares?
The fact is that nobody is really clamouring for this adaptation, and not only that, the last game was released about four years ago. It's not to say for a second that it could be good, but really, who's pushing for this? Aren't there enough franchises out there? Do we really need this one?
More to the point, what is the likelihood that it's going to be good? The odds on videogame adaptations actually being halfway decent are terrible, so why take the risk? Why bother when you could do literally anything else?
