Yesterday, we reported that director David O. Russell had left Sony’s adaptation of their hit video game Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. No reason was given at the time but it looked like O. Russell was moving on to direct an adaptation of The Silver Linings Playbook instead. Today, 24 Frames has new details on O. Russell’s departure from the project. It appears that O. Russell’s script was so long, ambitious, and perhaps most damning (from Sony’s perspective), it added plenty of characters who weren’t in the video game. As we reported last year, O. Russell had apparently changed Nathan Drake from a lone adventurer to a participant in a family of treasure hunters. That change wasn’t totally surprising considering that most of O. Russell’s filmography explores family dynamics, but for fans and for Sony, such a change is probably anathema to what they want: their video game faithfully transplanted to the big screen.
Sony will hire a new director and screenwriter to work from an earlier draft by Conan the Barbarian screenwriters Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer. Mark Wahlberg has most likely left the project and a summer 2012 release looks doubtful.