Neil Burger is doing a bit of project swapping. While the Limitless director was attached to helm Uncharted: Drake's Fortune - the video game adaptation that David O. Russell also abandoned - he has decided to move on and instead is now in talks to helm the new teen film Divergent.
While losing a director is rarely a good thing, there is some good news for the Uncharted movie. According to Variety, Marianne and Cormac Wibberley have been hired to do a rewrite of the video game movie. The two scribes are best known for writing both National Treasure and National Treasure: Book of Secrets. The selection of the Wibberleys is interesting given the fact that back in late 2010 - when Russell was still attached - the project was described as being similar in tone and feel to the National Treasure movies. The studio will wait until the new writers have completed their draft before hunting for a new director.
As for Burger, Divergent is what Summit Entertainment is hoping can be a gap-filler once the Twilight franchise ends later this year. Variety says that the director actually beat out other "high-profile" filmmakers for the job. The project is based on the series by 24-year-old author Veronica Roth and follows 16-year-old protagonist Beatrice Prior as she makes her way through a future where society has been split into five factions based on the virtues of honesty, selflessness, bravery, peacefulness and intelligence. Divergent is going to be the first of a trilogy and the second book, Insurgent, was released in May. The final book in the series will come out next fall.
Summit had no comment on the Burger negotiations, but the trade says that the studio hopes to start production next March and have the movie ready to be released in the first quarter of 2014.
