We’re going to go ahead and assume that if you’ve clicked on this article, you know who Nathan Fillion is and you know what the Uncharted games franchise is.
With that in mind, you’ll also know that talks of a film adaptation based on the Uncharted series has been doing the rounds in Hollywood for nearly a decade now.
Initially David O. Russell (American Hustle, Three Kings, Silver Linings Playbook) was in talks to make a film starring Mark Wahlberg as the series’ cocksure treasure hunter Nathan Drake. Once Russell was out of the picture, director Joe Carnahan (The A-Team, The Grey) was tipped to helm an Uncharted film with Tom Holland (Spiderman: Homecoming) tagged to star as a young Drake.
However, neither of these projects have been greeted by the Uncharted faithful whole-heartedly and this is because, in their view, there’s only one actor who can play Nathan Drake – and that’s Nathan Fillion.
Not only does Fillion bear a striking resemblance to Nathan Drake, but Drake’s character – a wise-cracking rogue with a heart of gold – is very close to the character of Mal Reynolds in Firefly, arguably Fillion’s best loved role. Of course, Hollywood being Hollywood – that is, a machine incapable of producing a decent video game adapatation – fans never expected to see Fillion in the role of Drake. But that changed this week.
Directed by Allan Ungar (Gridlocked) this Uncharted short-film is likely to send fans into a frenzy. Not only does it star Nathan Fillion as Drake, but Steven Lang (Avatar, Don’t Breathe) makes an appearance as Drake’s father-figure/side-kick Sully. Apparently Ungar and Fillion agreed to do the film after having dinner together.
Ungar is hoping that Sony takes note of his short film.
“The response has been great,” Ungar told the AV Club. “If Sony calls or Netflix calls or YouTube or somebody and they say, hey, let’s try to do this as a digital series or something else, I don’t think we would be upset. I think that’d be great, but I think, I think we accomplished and set out to do what we did.”
An Uncharted Netflix series starring Fillion and Lang? Sign us up immediately!
