Like ASSASSIN’S CREED, I feel like we’ve been talking about UNCHARTED: THE MOVIE for forever, with little progress having been made in the interim. First, David O. Russell (of all fucking people) was attached to write and direct the first cinematic Nathan Drake outing. Then, he bailed, and LIMITLESS director Neil Burger was called in before dropping out a year later. Since last February, KING OF KONG director Seth Gordon’s been attached to helm the adaptation.
However, since then, you may have heard of some restructuring going on over at Sony, and the new guy might not be as onboard with Gordon and his vision as Amy Pascal was.
That’s what Umberto at Heroic Hollywood is proposing: that new Sony head-honcho Tom Rothman thinks of this franchise as something smaller than a $200 million tentpole, more like RESIDENT EVIL when Pascal wanted something along the lines of INDIANA JONES. That means jettisoning their director, Gordon, for someone more malleable, less attached to the existing drafts, and, more importantly, cheaper.
Of course, the official word on the street regarding Gordon's dismissal isn’t “cheaper,” it’s “new creative direction.” Which really sounds like the same thing, only with an attempt not to piss off fans of the property.
This syncs up with the rumors that Rothman was almost embarrassed about Sony’s PIXELS, dismissing it as a geeky movie for fringe audiences. If we learned anything about him from his tenure at Fox, it’s that he really, truly doesn’t take “geeky” properties seriously (man, we almost lost you there, DEADPOOL).
This movie almost certainly will eventually happen, whether it’s as a mega-budget tentpole or as something more akin to Uwe Boll’s FAR CRY, and it’s really up to Rothman and Sony to figure out how they want to go about it. But it looks like Seth Gordon, one of the most clearly video-game savvy dudes directing movies right now, will not be a part of it, and that’s a shame.
Who would you want them to get for the budget version of UNCHARTED: THE MOVIE?
