Even in the current epoch of action piece heavy, cinematically charged triple-A video games, few stand so ripe for screen adaptation as Uncharted - or, indeed, any of the newer titles in developer Naughty Dog's extensive library. (We're getting a HBO serial version of The Last of Us, starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsay, soon enough.) They've taken an interesting route with the action-adventure game's movie remake, though, with Tom Holland cast as a markedly younger, fresh-faced version of series protagonist Nathan Drake, joined by Marky-Mark Wahlberg as mentor 'Sully' Sullivan.
In their latest issue, which features Uncharted on the cover, magazine Total Film has released a handful of images from the upcoming tent pole - and they're about as exotic as one might expect from a swashbuckling, map-traversing adventure flick.
In one, Holland's Drake stands quizzically in what appears to be a Very Spooky Cave, holding a fire torch up to an unseen object just off-screen. (They wouldn't want to ruin the surprise!) Joining him is co-star Sophia Ali, who slips into the muddied boots of series regular Chloe Frazer, another professional treasure hunter. The second gives Drake a Tony Stark-esque playboy sheen, placing him behind the wheel of an exorbitant speedboat in a tight, similarly expensive-looking white shirt. Cue that song by The Lonely Island, which we started humming immediately.
Holland was pivotal in getting the project off the ground, which languished in development hell for years, as Total Film reports. He even had a part to play in finding director Ruben Fleischer:
"Some of [the directors] came in, and had ideas that we didn’t like, that just didn’t fit the characters, and we had to move on to other people. We took inspiration from everyone. There were very different variations of Drake, and very different variations of Sully. Some people preferred to make the game, some people wanted to make it completely different to the game. It was an interesting process – one that I wouldn’t like to be in again. It’s quite stressful looking for a director."
Fleischer is best known for helming two other Sony projects: 2018's Venom, and 2019's Zombieland: Double Tap. In his own conversation with Total Film, he says that landing in the director's chair for the Holland-led swashbuckler was at least in part due to his long-standing relationship with the studio. Principle photography began in mid-March 2020. "I was firing on all cylinders from a production standpoint," the director notes. "I was just really in the rhythm of making movies."
Check out those new, exclusive images below. Uncharted is set to open in theaters on February 11.
