How ‘Uncharted’ escaped development hell and survived Hollywood’s video game curse
LOS ANGELES — For movie producers, “development hell” — Hollywood speak for a seemingly endless period of script rewrites and director hirings before getting the studio’s green light for production — is typically a bad sign.
That’s where Charles Roven and Alex Gartner found themselves while trying to make a film based on the Sony PlayStation video game series “Uncharted.”
The team first approached Matt Tolmach, then co-president of Sony-owned Columbia Pictures, in 2008 about bringing the swashbuckling series to the big screen. They were quickly paired with “Spider-Man” producer Avi Arad to bring the idea to life.
But the project struggled to get its sea legs. Video game adaptations were iffy propositions for the movie industry, with few examples of hits from which to draw. Early attempts to adapt “Uncharted” for the big screen took a faithful approach. An early script was stolen and leaked after the cyberattack on Sony Pictures’ computer systems. Directors including David O. Russell cycled in and out.
“Uncharted” risked becoming yet another botched Hollywood translation of a video game franchise, joining “Doom,” “Prince
