Sony's Uncharted gets seventh director
WHEN Steven Spielberg announced this week he'd be vacating the director's chair for the fifth Indiana Jones movie, fans decried the franchise's death – though there was understandably less gnashing of teeth over the loss of producer George Lucas.
Quality cinematic derring-do has been in short supply since Indy's heyday, though the prospect of Shia Bloody LeBeouf taking up the whip was an even worse prospect than seeing a 77-year-old Harrison Ford – looking for all the world like he's wafted out of the Ark of the Covenant himself – continue to punch out Nazis and Commies with withered fists.
Hopes were high that the big-screen version of the Indy-inspired PlayStation series Uncharted would help bring Saturday matinee thrills to a new audience, but while Dr Jones' latest has lost only one director, the beleaguered – and possibly cursed – cinematic outing for Sony's adventure juggernaut has lost six of them.
The poisoned chalice is now being lifted by Venom and Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer, from a script by Joe Carnahan (Bad Boys for Life) and Iron Man scribe Rafe Judkins. Fleischer is the seventh film-maker to take the reins following the departure of Bumblebee director and heir to the Nike fortune Travis Knight. Knight replaced Dan Trachtenberg, who in turn supplanted Night at The Museum's Shawn Levy. Prior to that, Seth Gordon, Neil Burger and David O Russell were all attached to direct the globe-trotting adventure at one time or other.
While Mark Wahlberg was originally tapped to play lead treasure hunter Nathan Drake, that was back in 2011. The Bostonian Funky Buncher will instead now portray our hero's gadabout mentor Victor 'Sully' Sullivan, with Spider-Man star Tom Holland as a younger Drake.
The cast recently added Antonio Banderas – fresh from his first Oscar nomination – in an unknown role, though given this is an old-fashioned adventure yarn, it's likely he'll play a heavily accented villain.
While an early script involved Drake's search for the legendary city of El Dorado, Uncharted the movie will now serve as a prequel to the games, setting up a fresh-faced Nathan as the action hero gamers know and love. It's a plot device inspired by a flashback level from the third game, which pilfered heavily from Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade's River Phoenix-led prologue.
Holland promises Uncharted will be the first genuinely decent video game movie, saying "I think what Uncharted offers that most video game films don't is that it's an origin story to the games. So if you played the games, you haven't seen what's going to happen in the film."
First released in 2007, the universally adored Uncharted captured the dusty, wise-cracking essence of classic Indiana Jones at a time when Spielberg was running his archaeologist's legacy into the ground with Crystal Skull.
Despite a revolving door of directors, it's hoped the movie – like the games – will bottle the thrill-soaked matinee features of old when it hits cinemas on March 5 2021.
