Everybody looks forward to Friday, but I think it's safe to say that nobody is having a better morning than Tom Holland right now. The huge news that just dropped is that Marvel Studios and Sony have reached an agreement that will keep Spider-Man in the MCU for the foreseeable future, but the good news hasn't stopped there, because one of Tom Holland's other projects, an adaptation of the Uncharted video game series, just found the perfect new director in Bumblebee's Travis Knight.
The Uncharted game series, which follows an Indiana Jones-like adventurer named Nathan Drake, has, in the same way that many video game properties have, been a topic of interest for many years, but it's been a slow process. Tom Holland was cast in the lead years ago with Shawn Levy in the director's chair, but a plan to film the movie in 2017 never happened. Then Levy left the project to go direct a movie with Ryan Reynolds,
The movie then found a new director last year in 10 Cloverfield Lane's Dan Tractenberg. However, Tractenberg then left the project himself just about a month ago, once again leaving the movie in limbo. Now things are, once again, back on track, as Deadline reports that Travis Knight is now taking over.
Travis Knight got his start directing stop motion animation with the critically acclaimed Kubo and the Two Strings. He then made the jump to live-action with the Transformers franchise spinoff Bumblebee. While that film didn't replicate the Transformers normal level of box office success, it was better received by critics than any other movie in the franchise.
While the Uncharted movie's game of musical chairs with directors certainly means that we have to wait and see what happens with Travis Knight, this absolutely feels like a great move. Between Kubo and the Two Strings and Bumblebee, Travis Knight has shown that he's a deft hand at combining exciting action with a family friendly story. While it's unclear exactly what the plan is with the Uncharted movie, the fact that the film has cast Tom Holland, who is significantly younger than the character of Nathan Drake is portrayed in the video games, would seem to indicate that the film will be geared toward a wider audience, in the same way Bumblebee was.
Nathan Drake is seen as an older teen in one segment of one game, and the belief is that this is how Holland will be approaching the part, with the movie set to be an origin story for the character, set before the events of any of the video games.
Whatever the plan for the Uncharted movie, Travis Knight has proven himself to be a solid director, and so the movie looks to be in good hands. If the movie has finally found the right person for the job, maybe it will finally get itself in front of cameras soon. Although, with the news that the next Spider-Man movie is now back on track for a 2021 release, who even knows anymore.
