Sony Pictures has been trying to get a big-screen adaption of the Uncharted video-game franchise off the ground for over a decade at this point, which have included a revolving door of directors including David O. Russell, Neil Burger, Seth Gordon, Shawn Levy, Dan Trachtenberg, and Travis Knight. However, earlier this year, it seemed as though there was light at the end of that very long tunnel when Ruben Fleischer (ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP) came onboard to direct UNCHARTED.
Tom Holland, who is set to star as treasure hunter Nathan Drake, praised the script as one of the best he'd ever read, later saying that production was just a few weeks away from getting started. It was all coming together, until a global pandemic forced the production of just about every movie and TV series to halt. D'oh! During an Instagram Live Q&A with Justin Bieber, Tom Holland revealed just how close they were to bringing UNCHARTED to life.
We went for day one — I'm doing this movie called Uncharted, which is based on a video game — and we showed up for our first day of shooting and they shut us down. I was in Berlin, so I had to come home and now I'm back in London.
Day one; that's got to hurt. Although production will likely resume when the world isn't on fire, this is just another in a long line of setbacks that the UNCHARTED film has endured. It almost feels like someone or something just doesn't want the project to happen. The UNCHARTED film will chronicle the early days of Nathan Drake, and is also set to star Mark Wahlberg as Victor "Sully" Sullivan, "an American treasure hunter, fortune seeker and businessman, as well as a friend, mentor and father figure to Drake." Antonio Banderas, Sophie Ali, and Tati Gabrielle have also been cast in roles which haven't been disclosed at this time.
Tom Holland's most recent film was ONWARD, which hit theaters less than a month ago, but owing to COVID-19, the Pixar film was made available digitally almost two weeks ago.
