Joe Carnahan Defies God And Man, Finishes The 'Uncharted' Screenplay
In Joe Carnahan's The Grey, a group of oil workers survive a plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness and trek through the elements, dying one-by-one as they're torn to pieces by wolves or simply lose the will to live. It's a fine metaphor for Sony's long-gestating adaptation of the Uncharted video game series, which has been in development since 2009 and has burned through more writers, directors, and release dates than I care to include in this sentence. So it's only natural that Carnahan, whose movies often broken people battling impossible odds, would take over screenwriting duties. He knows a thing or two about winning a war of attrition.
But let's press pause on that metaphor get to the real news here: Carnahan has apparently finished the Uncharted screenplay and he took to social media to celebrate.
Carnahan shared a picture of the script's cover page on Instagram, noting with his trademark self-confidence:
Done and Dusted. Now the REAL work begins. If there's a more monstrously cool action script in Hollywood right now, I wanna read it, 'cuz this thing is a BEAST.
And while he's not kidding about the "real work" beginning now (this thing will undoubtedly get written and rewritten a half dozen times if this is the version that actually goes before cameras), it's a glimmer of hope in the wilderness. The Uncharted movie may actually, you know, exist! Someday!
A photo posted by Joe Carnahan (@carnojoe) on
Of course, Carnahan won't be directing this one as he's currently occupied with Bad Boys For Life – that job falls to Night at the Museum and Real Steel director Shawn Levy. Then again, I won't really believe that the Uncharted movie actually exists until I'm sitting in a movie theater and the closing credits are rolling. Everything else before that could be a carefully orchestrated illusion.
Uncharted, based on the acclaimed video game series of the same name, follows a professional thief named Nathan Drake as he travels the world, plundering treasure and searching for artifacts. He's like a morally hazy Indiana Jones and it's the kind of role that demands a movie star (or could make one). Now that Assassin's Creed has come and gone, I guess this is the project that we can hope will break the dreaded video game movie curse.