Writer Joe Carnahan Discusses the UNCHARTED Movie, Says He Wants Nolan North to Star in It
With Joe Carnahan (The A-Team) writing the script and Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) set to direct the feature film adaptation of Uncharted, it looks like Sony Pictures is ready to finally move this film forward and into production!
Directors David O. Russell, Neil Burger, and Seth Gordon have all been attached to direct the film at various stages of production, but it seems like Levy is the one that's going to make it happen. During a recent interview with Collider, Carnahan talked about the film, and it sounds like he really wants to get this movie right for the fans.
"I can tell you that Shawn Levy and I sat down last weekend, he has fantastic knowledge. Here’s the thing, Shawn is an incredibly bright, incredibly skilled, talented guy, and you sit with him for five minutes and you know and understand why he has the level of success he’s had. I think he understands, we both have tremendous fondness for Raiders, and he wants to, I think Shawn’s capable of doing a lot of things. I can tell you this: what I’ve written is very anti-Indy in the sense of the guy that loves museums and wants to preserve these artifacts. He’s not! He’s a thief and he’s a grifter, and he’s a scourge. He and Sully are not good guys but they’re better than the bad guys. It’s a game, you know, they’re certainly rogues, and certainly don’t have a problem, even in the first game he just kind of dump Elena and it’s interesting. I think it’s gonna be, I honestly think this one’s got a real shot. And I was really glad when Shawn came on because I’m too deep into Bad Boys and I really wanna see that through. Too much sweat equity in that one; years of trying to do Uncharted. I’m flattered that these guys wanted me to write it. It’s a hell of a responsibility and hell of an opportunity and I don’t want to squander it now."
Carnahan went on to talk about diving into the mythology of Nathan Drake and the video game source material to help make sure that the movie stays true to the game and makes fans happy.
"Certainly the signet ring. The harvest magnet, the whole Francis Drake legend, and his parentage, his lineage. I thought that was important. You’re dealing with a guy who’s an orphan, and I came at it that way—what’s some of the things that are important to someone who’s an orphan? In the fourth game they dispelled all that, but I thought it’s still kind of an interesting. What excuses would you make about your character if you held to this notion that you were the heir to this great explorer? Your ancestor’s this great dubious, nefarious explorer? If you believed somehow that was your birthright. Were you conning yourself? There’s some interesting character stuff you can do there. That and the insane, the big action stuff. I kept some characters I like and kind of reset them within that world so there’ll be names and familiar faces and so on, but they won’t necessarily be what they were in the game, which I think is important, you have to do that, create amalgams. I can’t imagine fans of Uncharted will be unhappy, at least with the screenplay. And I do think there’s some interesting, again, anti-Indiana Jones stuff going on, looting and pillaging these UNESCO sites and world heritage sites and also these uncharted realms. There’s 3 million shipwrecks all over the world that have never been seen. That to me is fascinating. So there’s a lot of that stuff, and a lot of that’s kinda new and improved, for lack of a better phrase. I think people will dig it, but I can’t imagine. But I’m sure someone’ll hate my guts, but that’s okay, a lot of people hate my guts."
One thing we know about the fans is that you can't please everyone. You know what would please all the fans, though? If they cast Nolan North in the role of Nathan Drake. Carnahan says that's who'd he like to see star in the film, but I doubt the studio will do it. For those of you who don't know who North is, he is the actor who voices the character in the game franchise.
"Shawn and I have talked about a couple of guys, but it’s pointless to mention them now because we don’t know where everybody’s gonna be. In a perfect world it’d be Nolan North! [laughing] That’s who I’d like to see play Nathan Drake, that’d be the perfect casting, but I don’t know. I think that’s gonna be, again man, sheer economics. Who’s worth what, when, where, how. What gets us this, what gets us that. What’s the foreign side of things, international things. Mark’s great, Wahlberg’s great, but it just depends how young we wanna make Nate and then ultimately how young we wanna make Sully. Is Sully in his 50s and Nate in his late 30s? Is Nate in his late 20s and Sully’s in his early 40s? Who knows. It really is gonna depend on that process because if X gets excited and says “Oh, I want to play that,” then it means Sully’s gonna have to be this age, and that changes things. And if you’re talking about making three, four films, what’s ideal for that."
It will be interesting to see who they actually end up casting as Drake. I hope that they get it right, though. As much as I like Mark Wahlberg, I don't want to see him in the role. He just doesn't fit the character. He was attached to the film at one point, and I'm kinda glad that version of the movie didn't work out.
It sounds like Carnahan has a solid handle on things, and it's good to see that he has confidence in Levy because I'm not completely sold on him as the director yet. I'll just have to wait and see what he does with it!
Who would you like to see in the role of Nathan Drake?