Will Nathan Drake and Joel and Ellie ever make it to the big screen?
[toggler title=”TL;DR” ]With news that the Uncharted movie has lost countless writers and directors since 2011, and The Last of Us movie has reached a standstill in production – with nothing happening for a year and half since it was announced back in 2014 – the future of the two films is more uncertain than ever.[/toggler]
[dropcap size=small]D[/dropcap]evelopers Naughty Dog have truly conquered the world of gaming with their stellar Uncharted series, and The Last of Us, which both offer up immersive, cinematic game-play and incredibly well crafted stories. It’s really no surprise that folks have been entertaining the idea of taking the games into the realms of Hollywood, and plans to make the game franchises into film adaptations have been in the works for some time now.
It’s not proving to be a smooth ride for either game however, and recent news indicates that both games are having a hard time getting translated into the movie world.
Back in 2014, Deadline reported The Last of Us had been picked up by Screen Gems, and was being tackled by Spider-Man 3 writer and producer, Sam Raimi (of Ghost House Pictures). Neil Druckmann, Creative Director of the game itself, was also on board to write the script, and word was Maisie Williams was in talks to play the role of Ellie.
Everything seemed to be coming together quite nicely, but almost two years later, we’ve not heard anything more about the project. In a recent interview with IGN during a press event for Uncharted 4 (via Slashfilm), Druckmann revealed the film was still in the works, but had come to a complete standstill:
I know I said in an interview a while back we had a table read, got the script to a good place and it kind of entered development hell like these things tend to do. There hasn’t been any work done on it in over a year and a half.
‘Development hell’ is not a place you want any potential film to be in, and it’s certainly apparent that the future of a Last of Us movie release is more uncertain than ever. The fact that it’s still in the works is something, but with a year and half flying by with no work done, it’s a safe bet to assume we won’t be seeing this release for a long time yet (if it still goes ahead).
The Uncharted movie goes even further back to 2011, and already has a history of several different writers and directors dropping the film. Silver Linings Playbook writer and director, David O’ Russell, was the first to tackle the project, before swiftly leaving it behind.
With such a rocky time under its belt already, things have not been looking good for Nathan Drake’s adventure into the world of cinema. Druckmann was also asked about The Uncharted movie in the IGN interview, and revealed the film is still switching up writers:
Every once in a while they’ll come in and they’ll present to us: here’s the script, here’s what we’re thinking. We’ll tell them what we think works, what we think doesn’t work. That’s where we’re at. Last I heard is they got a new screenwriter, but we haven’t seen anything in a while.
It all sounds very messy, and both projects don’t seem to be making much headway at all. Sony apparently has the Uncharted movie set for release 30 June, 2017. Will it actually make that date? Given how things are looking so far, I wouldn’t bet on it, but anything could happen at this stage.
With many movie adaptations of games bombing in the past, maybe this is a sign that they should just remain as the brilliant games they are. Having said that, the new Assassins Creed movie coming out this year with Michael Fassbender looks set to be one of the most promising game-based movies to date, and could quite possibly buck the trend.
The only certainty about the possible movies at this point is that they are still being played around with, and it’ll probably be a long time before we get to see them – if we ever do.
