After well over a decade trapped in development hell, Sony’s Uncharted is finally set to hit theaters in July of next year, and at this stage, there’s absolutely no guarantee that it won’t become the latest in a long line of video game adaptations to bomb at the box office.
Not only is the genre still one of the most wildly inconsistent in Hollywood, but the overwhelming majority of the movies themselves tend to range from entirely forgettable to abjectly terrible. Detective Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog may have hit the sweet spot of critical and commercial acclaim, but they’re only 2 of almost 40 console-to-screen projects to reach the big screen over the last three decades.
Uncharted director Ruben Fleischer still hasn’t made a better film than his debut feature Zombieland, writers Art Marcum and Matt Holloway’s recent credits include Punisher: War Zone, Transformers: The Last Knight and Men in Black: International, the notoriously heavy-handed Avi Arad is one of the producers and star Mark Wahlberg has appeared in more than his fair share of tedious actioners over the years.
Fans were divided on the first look at leading man Tom Holland in character as Nathan Drake as well, and it hardly won over the skeptics who think he’s too young for the role, but according to insider Daniel Richtman, the creative team is confident enough to be talking about a sequel already. In fact, we heard earlier this year that the MCU’s Peter Parker wanted Dwayne Johnson as a future Uncharted villain, and Richtman now claims that on and offscreen mentor Robert Downey Jr. is also being eyed to break bad in the potential follow-up, with Holland hoping to get him in the project.
The two co-starred in Dolittle together, which was hardly the best use of their combined chemistry or talent, but everything presumably depends on how well or poorly Uncharted fares when it hits theaters in July.
