Where one man once tried, two other men will now succeed… or so Columbia Pictures hopes.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sahara screenwriters Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer will now be working on the adaptation of the Naughty Dog videogame Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune.
If you’re not playing the PS3 game right now, the story revolves around Nathan Drake, a purported descendant of explorer Sir Francis Drake, who is in search of the lost treasure of El Dorado. Originally, Kyle Ward was attached as the screenwriter when the studio picked up the rights back in June, but as Borys Kit puts it:
[The] very much in-demand scribe has video game adaptations Kane & Lynch at Lionsgate and Hitman 2 at Fox — and with the studio putting the project on a faster track, the decision was made to hire a new writer.
And this is when I ask: Why the need for the faster track? Considering that Paramount has movies like The Last Airbender and Dune on its slate for 2010 and the Star Trek sequel and the fourth Mission Impossible for 2011, you wouldn’t think they’d need another summer action tentpole, would they? Why spend all that production money on a series that might end up being mediocre like the Tomb Raider movies were?
Or better yet, why not use that money to fund some original work instead of videogame adaptations and franchise sequels? Or if one must go the adaptation route, why not bring some much-needed attention to underrated series like Artesia and Finder?
[Insert rest of standard rant here.]
jibrilbaldhead says:
So the writers of an aweful movie get to adapt a video game that dreams of being a well written as Tomb Raider. That is not to be taken as meaning that obm raider was well written BTW.
Looks like gold, boys and girls!
Travis says:
This is at once both an odd and obvious choice for an adaptation. It's obvious because it's an excellent game and would translate to a movie quite easily…because what makes the game so good is how it integrates cinematic technique and charisma with stupendous production values. It's better written than most big action flicks, and is in a lot of ways essentially an Indiana Jones movie you can play and shoot people in.
So sure, it'll be easy taking it to the screen, but it'll just be a typical action flick lacking the spark and intelligence that makes the source material so worthwhile.
Travis says:
This is at once both an odd and obvious choice for an adaptation. It's obvious because it's an excellent game and would translate to a movie quite easily…because what makes the game so good is how it integrates cinematic technique and charisma with stupendous production values. It's better written than most big action flicks, and is in a lot of ways essentially an Indiana Jones movie you can play and shoot people in.
So sure, it'll be easy taking it to the screen, but it'll just be a typical action flick lacking the spark and intelligence that makes the source material so worthwhile.