Drake’s fortune also known as ‘Uncharted’ is an upcoming action-adventure film directed by Ruben Fleischer. It is slated for release on the 16th of July, 2021 and dedicates its writing credits to Art Marcum and Matt Holloway.

The movie will serve as the prequel and origin story of Nathan Drake from Amy Henning’s video game creations of the same name. It shows details of a young Nathan Drake and how his friendship with Sullivan began. The film has been mentioned to adopt its inspiration from the fourth game in the series, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and it features Hollywood stars like Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg and Antonio Banderas.

Development:

The production of an uncharted (Drake’s fortune) film has been a topic at Sony dating as far back as 2008, a short while after the series started. The series turned out to be a huge success as it was enjoyed worldwide as an action-adventure game for PlayStation 3.

However, since then, the development of the film has been stuck for different reasons, with a total of seven directors, including Ruben Fleischer(Venom), attached to the project as well as cast members joining and leaving over the years. But this did not stop Sony pictures from pursuing the production of the film until they finally settled for Tom Holland to play the character of Nathan Drake, the main character of the movie.

This development seemed to have given a bit of life to the creation of the film. The directorial role was given to Fleischer after the exit of Travis Knight due to scheduling conflicts with Tom Holland. The exit of Knight as the director caused the film its December 2020 release date. Fleischer was confirmed as the new director in February 2020 and filming was set to begin in march. However, due to the pandemic, filming was suspended and the release date was once again affected.

It is reported that Sony has placed high hopes on the film because of the expansion of the production team, this will be the first film produced under Sony’s recently launched movie/television arm, PlayStation Production.

The film was once slated for a release in March 2021 and it was discovered to incorporate the franchise that sees video game adventurer Nathan Drake as a modern-day Indiana Jones. Through the years, Drake is seen to discover lost cities, avoid falling rocks, avalanches, and also battle sasquatches( big foot) in jungles.

These actions earned him the favour of been a favorite among gamers. So far, the release date is now slated for the 16th of July, 2021. It wouldn’t be surprising is the date is changed into a later date as this has been made to be the norm for the production.

Casts:

Nathan Filion was the first to show his interest in portraying the role of Nathan Drake when talks about the film production aired. Due to some issues, the director at that time, David Russell was unaware of who Nathan filion is and quickly dismissed the idea when he was asked by a fan if he had plans to offer the role to Nathan filion.

After this the film experienced a huge deal of consistent change in its casting and directorship. The final revelation of the casts of the film has given a new life to the production and also a new wave of hope in the fans who are greatly anticipating the movie. The casts, so far, are the major casts of the film that the public know about – other characters will be introduced at a later date.

The major characters of nathan Drake, played by spiderman star, Tom Holland, and Victor Sullivan, played by Mark Wahlberg have been revealed and there are only speculations surrounding the characters of the remaining casts. Earlier, Chris Hemsworth was supposed to be casted as Sullivan alongside Holland’s character.

Mark Wahlberg has been part of the production since 2010, back when David O Russell was the director. Mark initially bagged the role of Drake before Chris Pratt(2014) was offered the role after mark. However, Pratt reportedly declined the offer to portray Nathan Drake after Wahlberg. In 2017, Tom Holland was offered the role Nathan Drake and the completion of the script was confirmed in a post by Joe Carnahan, who was at the time writing the draft of the film’s script, on Instagram.

Tom Holland- Tom plays the role of the irrepressible Nathan ‘Nate’ Drake, a young fortune/treasure hunter and an explorer who travels to ancient ruins for both trinkets and answers to humanity¡¯s biggest mysteries. He meets and shoots a lot of bad guys along the way. He claims to come from a lineage of a famed English explorer, Sir Francis Drake, making him his descendant.

Mark Wahlberg – Mark plays Victor “Sully” Sullivan, a fellow fortune hunter like Nathan. Nathan sees Victor as a father figure and a mentor.

Sophia Taylor Ali- There have been speculations that Sophia is likely to plays Chloe Frazer who is also an adventurer like Nathan

Release:

The movie is set to be released 16th of July, 2021 in IMAX and 70mm film. The initial release date was June 10, 2016 but this was delayed to a later year on June 30, 2017. Since then, the movie experienced release delay two times before it was finally slated for October 8, 2021. This delay was due to the covid 19 pandemic that prevented the filming in mid march.

This date was however moved up to July 16, 2021.
The film has faced many hinderance in its production, casting and directorship. At a point in 2016, the film was removed from Sony’s release calendar because it had no director or casts. But this did not stop them from pursuing its production.

Although not fully anticipated – maybe by the uncharted fans but definitely not by a large number of the general public, the may be lucky to have a big debut judging by the line of casts to portray each character. Even though there has been no debate about Tom Holland portraying Nathan Drake, how effective he will be able to play the role will be found out upon the release.

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