Of the upcoming video game to movie adaptations Uncharted: Drake's Fortune seems like one of the more likely to be successful. The game has a reportedly compelling story based around a wise cracking treasure hunter very much in the vein of Indiana Jones or Dirk Pitt so it should be a snap to translate that to film and have a nice summer blockbuster on your hands right? Right.
MTV has the story
News broke over the summer that Sony would be guiding "Uncharted" to a big screen adaptation, with "Hitman 2" (another, as-yet-unreleased game adaptation) writer Kyle Ward delivering a script. Well Ward's now out, according to a report yesterday on Latino Review. Replacing him -- assuming negotiations go well -- are "Conan" reboot writers Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer.
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Normally I'd be concerned hearing about a project like this being shoved onto the fast-track. Video games have enough of a sorry history in Hollywood; the last thing fans want is for one of the most promising adaptation-worthy titles in recent years to get a crummy film treatment. My guess is that Sony's hurry can be attributed, at least in part, to the upcoming, Jerry Bruckheimer-produced "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time," which is looking mighty good.
A quick IMDB search reveals that Donnelly and Oppenheimer were writers on the Sahara movie (a fact that I didn't know when I referenced it above) which I think is often unfairly dismissed, so they definitely have the chops when it comes to scripting this kind of fun, pop-corn romp. What seems to be a good sign is that the Hollywood machine seems to have decided video-game adaptations will be the next big thing and as such might actually throw some talent behind them.
Source:
MTV
January 15, 2008, 01:37:30 PM
