Dan Trachtenberg on why he won’t do a straight adaptation of Uncharted

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

The big-screen adaptation of the Uncharted video-game franchise has been in various stages of development for over a decade at this point, and the project has seen a number of directors attached to the film, including David O. Russell, Neil Burger, Seth Gordon, and Shawn Levy. Earlier this year, Sony Pictures tapped Dan Trachtenberg (10 CLOVERFIELD LANE) to helm the film, obviously hoping that the fifth time will be the charm.

As we know, video-game movies typically aren't well-received by fans, and Dan Trachtenberg told Games Radar that he's hoping to avoid a similar fate by steering clear of making of a straight adaptation of the source material. "[I] have been approached with different versions of this tale and have always been not that interested in it because I didn't really want to trace the game," Trachtenberg said. "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 is quite excited by what they've whipped up so far, even saying that "if Naughty Dog so chose to make another Uncharted game featuring Nate and Sully… this movie's story is probably the story that they would want to tell."

The new film is set to star Tom Holland (SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME) as a younger version of Nathan Drake, and previous director Shawn Levy has previously said that the film was aiming to be "an Indiana Jones story for a generation that didn’t grow up on Indiana Jones."

UNCHARTED is slated for a December 18, 2020 release.