Long-Delayed 'Uncharted' Film With Tom Holland Unearths New Release Date

Following almost a decade of revisions, false starts, and delays, Sony’s Tom Holland-fronted adaptation of “Uncharted” has landed a release date, and a competitive one to boot.

Sony Pictures and Columbia Pictures will release their film adaptation of the beloved PlayStation adventure game series, “Uncharted,” on Dec. 18, 2020. The film is set to star Holland (“Spider-Man: Far From Home”) as a younger incarnation of the series’ protagonist Nathan Drake and will explore the globe-trotting treasure hunter’s origins.

This prime holiday release date puts the film up against some stiff competition, opening on the same weekend as Steven Spielberg’s new take on “West Side Story” with Ansel Elgort and the Eddie Murphy sequel “Coming to America 2.” It will also face-off the following week against Disney’s live-action prequel “Cruella” with Emma Stone, and DreamWorks’s “The Croods 2.”

No other casting decision has been made for the film, though Sony has been said to be actively searching for another big star to play Drake’s cantankerous mentor and surrogate father figure, Victor "Sully" Sullivan. Way back in 2017, Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad”) was said to be in consideration for the role, but as recently as March, a new rumored shortlist included stars like Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pine, Matthew McConaughey, and Woody Harrelson.

“Uncharted” is set to be helmed by hot genre director Dan Trachtenberg, who made waves in 2016 with his vicious, not-actually-a-sequel, “10 Cloverfield Lane.” This will be Trachtenberg’s second feature film, but his work can also be seen on the small screen with the “Black Mirror” Season 3 episode “Playtest,” and an episode of Amazon’s violent anti-superhero series “The Boys” coming later in the summer.

The “Uncharted” series was introduced in 2007 by Naughty Dog, the creators of other PlayStation classics “Crash Bandicoot” and “The Last of Us.” The games follow protagonist Drake, a descendant of the legendary Elizabethan-era explorer Sir Francis Drake, as he scours the globe unearthing ancient treasures and lost cities, including El Dorado, Shangri-La, and Iram of the Pillars, usually with Sully and his love interest Elena Fisher in tow. Drake’s story was concluded in the 2016 PlayStation 4 exclusive, “Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End,” but the series has since continued with different lead characters.