A movie adaptation of Uncharted has been in development for so long, that seven different directors have been attached to the project and Mark Wahlberg aged from playing central character Nathan Drake to the older, wiser sidekick Sully. The much younger Tom Holland is now playing Drake and he’s been telling Total Film that; “it’s quite stressful looking for a director.”
Since 2009, seven names have been announced as directing the Uncharted film, including Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane), Seth Gordon (the Baywatch movie), Shawn Levy (Free Guy), Travis Knight (Bumblebee), Neil Burger (Divergent) and even David O Russell (who directed Wahlberg in Three Kings).
Venom director Ruben Fleischer is the person who finally managed to bring the film to fruition. Holland told Total Film; “Some of [the directors] came in, and had ideas that we didn’t like, that just didn’t fit the characters, and we had to move on to other people. We took inspiration from everyone.”
As well as directors, the film went through many different writers and rewrites, with three names credited for the final film.
It was eventually decided that the movie would be a prequel to the games, with Holland playing a young version of Drake and for it to give the backstory of how he meets and teams up with Wahlberg’s Sully.
Holland explained; “There were very different variations of Drake, and very different variations of Sully. Some people preferred to make the game, some people wanted to make it completely different to the game. It was an interesting process – one that I wouldn’t like to be in again. It’s quite stressful looking for a director.”
Fleischer says that coming straight off the back of the first Venom film and Zombieland: Double Tap (both for Sony) meant that “I was firing on all cylinders from a production standpoint. I was just really in the rhythm of making movies.”
While waiting for Uncharted to finally be released in February, check out our guide to the best adventure movies.