Ever since the first game was released a decade ago, Sony Pictures has been trying to get a big screen version of the Uncharted off the ground. Now, it looks like an Uncharted movie is finally happening with Real Steel and A Night at the Museum trilogy's Shawn Levy in the director's chair and Spider-Man: Homecoming's Tom Holland starring as Nathan Drake. While Holland is a good bit younger than many fans of the game expected, Levy explains that he has a very good reason for making the Uncharted movie an origin story: it lets him tell a story that ties directly into the game, but that doesn't repeat any of the game's storylines. According to Levy...
So, for me, it was a fact that the game is awesome; the spirit of the game, with its action set pieces, it's imaginative setting, and above all, the kind of rogue swagger of Nathan. Those are things that I think make for a great movie. And, for me, the kind of the big, like the aha moment, if you want to call it that, was I met with Tom Holland and he kind of put it really succinctly and saying, if we do the origin of Drake, that is something that we haven't seen as the plot of games 1, 2, 3, 4; we've seen a snippet of an origin of Sully and Drake meeting in the past, but here's maybe an opportunity to do a treasure-hunting action movie with attitude, with a protagonist --- and chapter of the protagonist's life --- that you can't get for free, at home, by just playing the game.
While Shawn Levy's comments to Nerdist argue for the merits of telling an "untold tale," focusing on a younger Nathan Drake also has some other key benefits. Not only can an origin story set up a clear character backstory for audiences that haven't played the games, but a younger star offers the chance for Tom Holland to age into the Nathan Drake role over the course of multiple films as the stars of the Harry Potter film franchise did. After all, Uncharted is tailor made for additional adventures, should the first one prove a hit. The odds of that are looking better and better, too. In the wake of the crowd pleasing Spider-Man: Homecoming, it's pretty hard not to be a Tom Holland fan.
The first Uncharted game, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. Published by Naughty Dog and Sony Interactive, the game revolves around a sort of contemporary Indiana Jones. Nathan Drake is a skilled treasure hunter on the search for El Dorado. To date, the franchise has also seen the release of three Uncharted sequels: Among Thieves in 2009, Drake's Deception in 2011 and, just last year, A Thief's End.
