The long awaited UNCHARTED: DRAKE'S FORTUNE movie is still alive, so says director Seth Gordon (HORRIBLE BOSSES, KING OF KONG). In fact, he has revealed plans to start filming early next year! As a big fan of the games, I’ve been intrigued by the progress (or lack thereof) behind the scenes of this movie. David O. Russell was attached to direct at one point, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg were approached to write the script but declined, and I shit you not there was even a crazy story about Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro co-starring. So we know someone somewhere really wants this movie to happen, and with the next game in the series to hit the PS4 next year, I see no better time to get a move on.
While speaking with Zap2It, Gordon revealed the tentative plan to start shooting the UNCHARTED movie:
“I think very early next year. That’s the plan. That’s like tomorrow, essentially, because the prep is so complicated for the movie… It’s going to honor the mythology of the game, but I would say honor some of the most interesting stuff from the first one and build from there. There’s some stuff that isn’t in the game.”
He talked about the story that goes beyond the game:
“I love the complexity and frankly the sophistication of the storytelling in the game, and we aspire to that — but don’t want to tell the exact same story, of course — so something that doesn’t break the rules of what it did but expands. Because I feel like the people who play the games and know them well don’t want to just see the same story told. You want extra shades.”
So who will play Drake? Gordon says:
“I want it to be a great actor. That’s number one, and then if it’s someone who has an actual jaw, that’s even better. The game is so well done that you need it to live up to that. There’s no way we’d do the inverse of that where it’s somebody famous who can’t [act].”
If UNCHARTED: DRAKE'S FORTUNE is going to start filming early next year, we should be hearing some casting decisions before the this year is through. They have a hard road ahead to make this movie as good as the games; it’s the only game I played where I broke a sweat because of the excitement and tension.
So we arrive at the inevitable question again, who is going to play Nathan Drake?