David O’Russell leaves Uncharted.

The stars are aligning and the two filmmakers, O’Russell and Hughes, that were odd choices for franchises I love (Uncharted, Akira) have left their respective movies and gone on to do other things. Sadly, Aronofksy (a hero of mine) also left Wolverine – so you take the bad with the good. Deadline reported that:

David O Russell is no longer developing Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. He’s stepped out of the project. Since getting the Oscar accolades on The Fighter, Russell has been juggling a number of projects. Sony Pictures is getting a new writer to work from the draft done by Thomas Dean Donnelly & Joshua Oppenheimer. Studio’s still keen on the picture.

I sighed a bit of relief on this decision because he might have taken a more serious approach to the movie, which the material doesn’t warrant. Also, Mark Wahlberg, O’Russells alter-ego, might not stay on as Nathan Drake. I think Wahlberg was a weird choice and I’ve always been a champion of Nathan Fillion or Josh Duhamel as Drake.

What also annoyed me about the whole thing is people keep referring to it as an “Indiana Jones remake”. First off, Indiana Jones was a rip-off of older movies that were shown on television. Second, Indiana Jones is an archeologist and intellectual. Nathan Drake, while very smart, is far from a good comparison. His comparisons to the likes of Jack Colton (Romancing the Stone) are better.

-Collin