Last week, writer-director David O. Russell left Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and came on board to write and direct and adaptation of the video game Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.  It's interesting to see O. Russell leave one genre project for another when you consider that his last movie was "an existential comedy".  But who will star as protagonist Nathan Drake?  Firefly and Castle star Nathan Fillion thinks it should be him.  Fillion has begun a Twitter campaign to have his almost 650,000 followers cheer for him to get the role.  Hit the jump for why I think Fillion would be great for the part and the obstacles I see in the way of him getting it.

If you've played Uncharted, it's not hard to see Fillion in the role.  The character is charming, wise-cracking, and heroic in spirit.*  I also think that Fillion is an actor with enough charisma and dashing good-looks that it's surprising he hasn't already been getting leading roles in action movies.

But Fillion has two major obstacles in getting the role.  The first issue is his age.  He's almost forty and studios want their franchise heroes to be in their mid-20s, early-30s.  Of course, Tom Cruise is almost fifty and no one is stopping him from doing action movies and Paramount is planning to build the future Mission: Impossible franchise off the 39-year-old Jeremy Renner.  I can see Sony wanting a younger actor, but Fillion isn't so old that his age should be a deal-breaker.

The other, and more problematic issue, is scheduling.  It's hard to fit in an action blockbuster when you're doing a weekly TV series for a large chunk of the year.  It's not an impossibility, but the larger the film—and Uncharted is being positioned as a blockbuster—the more time it takes to shoot.  Would Sony and O. Russell want Fillion enough that they would be willing to shoot around his schedule for Castle?

Despite these two issues, I think Fillion would be perfect for the role and hopefully Sony and O. Russell will give him a chance.

*In action, he's a genocide machine.  I've only played through about three quarters of the game and I'm pretty sure I've killed at least a thousands people by now.  The number of minorities you murder in your quest for buried treasure eventually becomes somewhat unsettling.