If Uncharted the movie is obviously from the famous license developed by Naughty Dog, and Bend Studios to a lesser extent with Uncharted: Golden Abyss, it will tell an untold story, based on the early years of the adventurer. Tom Holland’s choice to play Nathan Drake initially surprised, with fans imagining Nathan Filion or Mark Wahlberg in the role instead.
We will have to wait to see the film to get a final opinion on this casting, but in the meantime, The main actor, currently in the center of attention with Spider-Man No Way Home, did an appearance during CES. Invited to the Sony conference, he took the stage and spoke about his first contact with Uncharted games, without which the film would never have seen the light of day.
Let us recall on this subject that the adaptation of Uncharted in film is a very long-standing project, passed from hand to hand for years before materializing around director Ruben Fleischer. It looked pretty obvious that the actors are approaching the base material, to soak up the atmosphere and character of the characters, but the context seems different in the present case.
25-year-old Tom Holland explained that he had never launched the Uncharted games before production began Spider-Man Homecoming, released in 2017, but that the fact of working directly with Sony had allowed him to experience all this in the best conditions, even before being chosen for the role of Drake:
I hadn’t discovered games until I started making Spider-Man: Homecoming. One of the perks of making these movies is that they are made by Sony, and one of the perks of working for Sony is PlayStation. So all of the actors’ dressing rooms were outfitted with the best TVs and the latest PlayStation, and one of the games they gave me was Uncharted.
Obviously, the discovery went very well, since the actor declared that he had to come and get him so that he could get out of his caravan-lodgebecause he was too absorbed in the adventure. Followed discussions with Tom Rothman, CEO and President of Sony Pictures Cinema Division:
As soon as we started we couldn’t stop. I remember them trying to drag me out of my trailer, and I said, “No no no, we’re about to complete this mission.”
It remains to be seen if it was these exchanges that led Sony to choose Tom Holland to play Nathan Drake, and if that choice actually had an impact on telling a story that predates the games. Regarding the adaptation, Ruben Fleischer recently said that trying to replicate the gaming experience is the best way to miss an adaptation.
According to him, to be successful, it is necessary to succeed in capturing the essence of the basic material, and to work it for give birth to a film capable of existing by itself. However, there is a good chance that the film contains many winks, like the very aerial footage shown today.
