The Uncharted film adaptation has been quietly struggling along these last few years. The Sony project has lost a whole slew of diffrent writers, directors and other contributors over the last decade. Now, yet another director is coming in to fill the empty role left behind by the loss of yet another director. Travis Knight, known recently for the 2018 Transformers spin-off Bumblebee. It all looks pretty grim for the film, one could say it’s in uncharted territory.
This is actually the second time the director chair has been filled in as many months, signaling that the project might be in trouble. And if that departure of a director wasn’t enough to cast doubts on the film ever seeing release, consider that more than a decade has passed working on this project and fans have still yet to see even a glimmer of a finished film. The film has circulated as an idea since 2007 and the birth of the Uncharted franchise, but a seemingly never-ending procession of writers and directors have come and gone in that time.
The first director named for the film was David O. Russell back in 2010, although he quietly left the position in May 2011 over “creative differences.” His loss also seemed to contribute to further problems, as a new writer was brought in with Neil Burger (Limitless, The Illusionist) pegged to write. That all changed again throughout 2014 as Sony then planned to have Seth Gordon (Horrible Bosses) direct Uncharted based on a script by David Guggenheim (Safe House).
This month, Uncharted lost Trachtenberg, who later joked on Twitter about also leaving over “creative differences,” echoing earlier problems.
And even with all of these delays and setbacks, the film studio leading the project is rather ambitious about the release date. The Uncharted movie begins production in 2020, which means we’re about to see an extremely rushed shooting and post-production schedule if it wants to make a 2020 release at all. The film chronicling the tales of Nathan Drake is set to premier on December 18, 2020. It’s very ambitious, given that the move isn’t even fully shooting yet.
