Actually, Mark Wahlberg Might Not Ruin the Uncharted Movie After All

A while back, it was a very sad day. Mark Wahlberg took it upon himself to announce a few adaptation-murdering details regarding the Uncharted movie, which included himself cast as the lead of Nathan Drake, and the addition of Nathan’s father and uncle, who haven’t even made an appearance in the video game series (so far, not counting the theory that Sully, Nathan’s older partner-in-crime, is related to Nathan in some way). Well, it turns out there’s been a few developments regarding what once seemed to be concrete details, in that, thankfully, said details may not be so concrete, including a video of a fan personally petitioning David O. Russell, the film’s director, to nix Mark Wahlberg in place of Nathan Fillion.

Remember Red Shirt Guy? He’s the guy who found a mistake in World of Warcraft’s extremely detailed lore and confronted some of the game’s designers about it. Awesome? Totally. Difficult to find flaw in lore, especially when said lore is for a universe as big as a constantly-updating MMO? Not so much. How about confronting a famed director on the street and getting your point across that he’s going to ruin a beloved franchise, while people who are seemingly his bodyguards try to shoo you away? Yeah. That’s what this guy did:

When that yellow subtitle text pops up on screen, it’s actually a summary of what the barely-audible woman actually said, which, according to this video’s YouTube post, was that the woman sent David O. Russell Firefly DVDs, which I guess they used as Nathan Fillion’s audition.

Now that the chronicling of this heroic young man is out of the way, there has been a bit of he-said-she-said going on with the film that is worth chronicling. Mike Schramm of Joystiq caught up with the director, Justin Richmond, for the next installment in the Uncharted video game franchise, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, and asked him about Russell’s intention to fabricate a Drake family dynamic for the upcoming movie, to which Richmond replied,

“First of all, all that stuff was denied by David O. Russell. He actually called us up and was like, ‘I don’t know what these guys are talking about,'”

then mentioned that Mark Wahlberg was in no way confirmed to play Nathan Drake.

Seems like good news, right? The thing is, Mark Wahlberg was the one who broke the news in an interview for MTV News, and he made certain details pretty darn clear, however, to be fair, Wahlberg didn’t technically say “I’ll be playing Nathan Drake,” but he did say that the idea was to have Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro play his uncle and father. Technically, Wahlberg could be playing some other character with those two as his relatives, though logic would dictate that Wahlberg would be starring as Nathan Drake instead of some random guy with actors as big as Pesci and De Niro playing Random Guy’s relatives. But! There’s this LA Times article that says the Uncharted film will be about a “family of thieves” and will include Nathan Drake’s extended family. Couple that with Wahlberg saying Pesci and De Niro will be his uncle and father, and we’re back to depressing square one. Plus, you know, LA Times clearly states,

Meanwhile, Mark Wahlberg, the “Fighter” star who will take on the Nate Drake role in this new film, told 24 Frames that he hasn’t read what Russell’s written yet but had been told extensively about the idea and believes it’s a world away from most video-game adaptations.

followed by a quote straight from David O. Russell which confirms Nathan’s fabricated family:

“We’ll have the family dynamic, which we’ve done in a couple of movies now,” he said. “And then you take that and put it on the bigger, more muscular stage of an international action picture, but also put all the character stuff in it. That’s a really cool idea to me.”

So, there’s that.

Who do we believe? According to the Uncharted 3 director, David O. Russell personally called and said none of these details were true, even saying he didn’t know what everyone was talking about, and yet, there’s video evidence of Mark Wahlberg saying otherwise, as well as an LA Times article confirming Wahlberg’s statements.

At least we all know who we want to believe.

(Joystiq via FilmDrunk via Topless Robot)