The world has a new franchise, courtesy of Sony Productions. Yes, the box office success of Sony’s videogame adventure movie Uncharted has given the studio the confidence to officially declare we can expect more Nathan Drake in the future.
Deadline reports that hot on the heels of Uncharted’s 106.4 million global box office, in just one weekend, Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group chairman and CEO Tom Rothman sent an email to the company. His message celebrated the success of Tom Holland’s new action movie and underscored the continued efficacy of the theatrical distribution model despite pressure from competing streaming services.
“With over $100 million in box office worldwide in just one weekend, and a 90% positive audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, Uncharted is a new hit movie franchise for the company,” Rothman wrote. “This marks a great victory for every single division of the company… The ensuing impact is proof once again of the unmatched cultural power of real movies. On the heels of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, and Spider-Man: No Way Home, Uncharted is yet another blow to the theatrical naysayers and further proof of the efficacy of our model.”
Cutting through the back-patting, the key takeaway from the email is that Uncharted 2 is all but confirmed now. Director Reuben Fleischer said he’d like to make a sequel, explicitly calling out the car chase in Uncharted 4 as a key sequence he’d be interested in replicating.
“I think the greatest car chase ever filmed in any film or anything was in Uncharted 4,” he said in a promo video for Uncharted. “I’ve done plenty of car chases in my career, but that car chase is unparalleled,” Fleischer said.
Sony is likely to want Holland to reprise the role of Nathan Drake in a potential sequel as well. The Spider-Man star has been a good luck totem for the studio, with his last film similarly doing mega-bucks at the box office.