We know that filmmaker David O. Russell ultimately decided to direct a movie based on Sony’s bestselling UNCHARTED games, but it sounds like Nathan Fillion’s public (and justified) campaign to play main character Nathan Drake might not come to fruition.
Showbiz 411 says that Mark Wahlberg could be Russell’s Drake, which honestly wouldn’t be too surprising given their ongoing working relationship (THREE KINGS, I HEART HUCKABEES, THE FIGHTER). It would also be Wahlberg’s second go at playing a videogame character (who could possibly forget MAX PAYNE?).
But things get weird: the site claims that Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci could reunite yet again for the project. While De Niro would be perfect as the main character’s cigar-chomping chum Sully, Pesci’s potential part is a mystery.
Showbiz 411 also makes the bizarre comment that “the story will have something to do with antiquities dealers in New York”, which isn’t remotely close to either game’s story — the first UNCHARTED follows fortune hunter Drake and spunky reporter Elena on a quest for El Dorado, the legendary city of gold. We’ve already heard that Russell is rewriting the previous draft from Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer (CONAN, COWBOYS & ALIENS), but that would be a significant deviation from the solid story foundation of the game(s).
But what’s particularly amusing is the comment from the site’s reporter Roger Friedman (who you may recall was previously fired from Fox News for reviewing a pirated copy of Fox’s own X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE) about Russell’s rewrite of the script: “Word is the actual video game didn’t have much there aside from a concept and a name.”
As the millions who’ve played the game can attest, it is actually perhaps the best example of a game written and presented like a big-budget Hollywood action blockbuster. So we should probably take the entire report with the standard prescription of Angelina Jolie’s sleeper agent.
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