'Uncharted' Movie Back On Track With 'Bumblebee' Director Travis Knight Taking Over
Not long ago, the long-developing adaptation of Uncharted set up at Sony Pictures hit yet another speed bump by losing director Dan Trachtenberg. The filmmaker behind 10 Cloverfield Lane left the project in August, though no reason was given for his departure. It was the second blow for a Sony project starring Tom Holland after Sony and Marvel were having trouble negotiating a new deal to share the rights to Spider-Man and keep him in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But Sony has fixed both problems.
Hot on the heels of the announcement of a new deal between Sony and Marvel for a third Spider-Man movie produced by Kevin Feige, Sony Pictures is currently in talks with Bumblebee director Travis Knight to take over the video game adaptation, and Tom Holland is still slated to star in the movie as adventurer Nathan Drake.
Uncharted is a video game adaptation that has been in the works for a long time. It has cycled through countless filmmakers and always seems to have some kind of trouble. Thankfully, the video game franchise has remained popular, with the fourth entry arriving back in 2016 on PlayStation 4. If you've never played, here's a taste of the game:
These games are great! But as we've seen, video game movies are tough to crack, and the constant development problems for Uncharted haven't given us much confidence that this movie can break the mold. But maybe a creative mind like Travis Knight can help.
Travis Knight got his start in stop-motion animation on television with shows like The PJs and Gary & Mike. He rode that wave to feature length stop-motion animation over at LAIKA where he served as vice president of animation, overseeing production on movies like Coraline, ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls, as well as taking the opportunity to direct Kubo and the Two Strings for the studio. But last year, he made the jump to live-action blockbusters with Bumblebee, and that's certainly what got him the job here.
What's great about Knight is that he just got done giving the Transformers franchise its best entry since the original movie in 2007. He gave it focus, he gave it heart, and he turned it into a sci-fi adventure that felt like it came straight out of the 1980s. Maybe there's a chance he can do something similar with Uncharted and give us something akin to a great action adventure from decades past. We're not exactly confident since the script comes from Men in Black International and Transformers: The Last Knight writers Art Marcum & Matt Holloway. Granted, the writing duo did give us the first Iron Man, but they've yet to give us anything nearly as good since then.
Uncharted currently has a release date of December 18, 2020, but we won't believe it until we see it.