After ten whole years of development, and six directors leaving the project, Tom Holland has confirmed to IGN that the Uncharted movie based on the hit video game series will start filming in four weeks. Given the film’s history of setbacks, the Spider-Man actor is thrilled to finally get a chance to play Nathan Drake on the big screen and recalled first being offered the role.
“It was interesting,” Holland told IGN, “when I sat down with [Sony Pictures Chairman] Tom Rothman and we were talking about video games, and I was like ‘Oh, I’ve just finished Uncharted.’ And he was like ‘Well, why don’t you play Nathan Drake’ I remember being like, ‘I would do anything to play Nathan Drake. Please, that would be amazing.’ So yeah, we start shooting in like four weeks. Mark Wahlberg is going to be amazing as Sully. The stunt department that we have out there in Berlin have done an amazing job already, prepping the stunts, and it’s going to be an exciting one.”
Just to put things in perspective, Sony has been trying to make an Uncharted movie for so long that Wahlberg went from being attached as the lead to, well, playing the old guy. Not to mention, Bumblebee director Travis Knight exited the film at the end of December 2019, so it’s pretty amazing that replacement Ruben Fleischer is getting Holland and company in front of the camera so quickly.
As for the film’s troubled production, before Knight became the sixth director to run for the hills, David O. Russell, Neil Burger, Seth Gordon, Shawn Levy, and Dan Trachtenberg were all attached to helm Uncharted at some point in the past 12 years. On top of that, the role of Nathan Drake bounced from Walhberg to Chris Pratt and a slew of rumored contenders before locking down Holland in 2017 as he rocketed to fame as Marvel’s new Spider-Man.