In a shocking bit of news, director Shawn Levy has stepped down from the Uncharted film, according to a report tucked inside another report by The Hollywood Reporter. The site explains that Levy is now helming the Ryan Reynolds action-comedy Free Guy instead, and that Sony is currently in the process of looking for a replacement director.
No other details were given aside from confirmation that Spider-Man: Homecoming star Tom Holland is still attached to the project and is still set to portray a young Nathan Drake; as opposed to the adult Drake from the video game.
Uncharted will be a prequel to the game series, taking its basis from the sequence in Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception wherein the young thief first encounters his partner Victor Sullivan and in essence sets up the events of the entire game franchise.
Despite previous drafts by the likes of Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty), Oscar nominee David O. Russell, Doctor Strange‘s Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer, Safe House‘s David Guggenheim, and Joe Carnahan, this new version of the film will bring on a new writer to rework the new-found premise.
Based on the action-adventure video game Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune from Naughty Dog and Sony Interactive, the story follows a descendant of explorer Sir Francis Drake, a treasure hunter named Nate Drake who believes he has learned the whereabouts of El Dorado, the fabled South American golden city, from a cursed golden statue. The search becomes competitive when a rival hunter joins the fray, then is escalated when creatures — actually mutated descendants of Spaniards and Nazis — begin attacking those hoping to learn the treasure’s true secrets.
Uncharted is an Arad/Atlas Entertainment Production, with Charles Roven, Avi Arad, Alex Gartner, and Ari Arad producing.
