Ryan Reynolds was going to play Nathan Drake in canceled Uncharted film

Uncharted is one of the most cinematic games on the market but that hasn’t stopped Sony from wanting to make it a film series. Ever since Uncharted 2, a movie version has been floating through Hollywood. It once had Mark Wahlberg attached, now it has Spider-Man star Tom Holland… but in between those two versions, there was another.

A-Team and The Grey director Joe Carnahan was developing a mature version of Uncharted skewed towards an R-rating that would’ve seen Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds in the shoes of charismatic protagonist Nathan Drake. Carnahan noted in a new interview from DiscussingFilm (hosted by yours truly) that Reynolds was close to being set for the role but chose Deadpool in the end.

“It was more skewed to an adult audience and Ryan Reynolds was very close to doing it but I think they called his options on Deadpool. […] I think he was really close to playing Drake, we had conversations and they wanted Deadpool 2, X-Force, yadda yadda,” stated Carnahan.

Carnahan’s version would’ve only briefly adapted the younger teenage Drake that we saw in Uncharted 3 which seems to be what the current adaptation with Holland is centering around now. If you’ve played the games, this is where Nathan Drake meets mentor and partner in crime Sully, who Carnahan says was hoping to be played by Breaking Bad actor Bryan Cranston.

Carnahan also broke his silence on the opening scene of the film which he teased as being an epic spectacle on Twitter when he was writing it.

“It was a ski lodge sliding down an entire hill, it was fucking great. They blew out the stilts on this lodge, it was plowing through this forest on its way over a cliff, it was really cool. It was a very Uncharted, very big sequence with Aretha Franklin singing “I’m gonna knock on your door, tap on your window pane” and Drake trying to sing the song while they were beating the shit out of him,” Carnahan said.

Carnahan also had some choice words for Naughty Dog’s golden boy, Neil Druckmann. After creative differences with Uncharted 1 – 3 writer/director Amy Hennig, Druckmann and his partner at the time Bruce Straley took over Uncharted 4. The two led the project in a different direction, still keeping some of the general themes but overhauling a lot of the story.

Druckmann publicly voiced his displeasure with the state of Carnahan’s Uncharted film by saying no one at Naughty Dog had any knowledge of the film and didn’t support it, leading to tension between the two. Carnahan states he wanted to make Hennig proud but not Druckmann, throwing in a few insults towards the acclaimed game director known for bringing The Last of Us series to life.

Druckmann has since been more positive with Dan Trachtenberg coming on as director, expressing excitement.

You can hear more about what Carnahan wanted to do with the Uncharted film, his canceled Daredevil film, and his upcoming films in the DiscussingFilm interview. As of the start of 2019, 10 Cloverfield Lane director Dan Trachtenberg will be helming the Uncharted film with Tom Holland in the lead role.