The saga of David O Russell’s involvement with the adaptation of PlayStation title Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune just took another twist, with the director coming back to the project after ditching negotiations back in August.
It’s the latest turn in Russell’s career, which has veered from the endless problems of comedy drama **Nailed, to triumphant Oscar buzz for The Fighter. And only last week he wasputting an axe into the head of Natalie Portman’s plan to have him direct Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, choosing instead to head to **Old St Louis **with Vince Vaughn and a rumoured Scarlett Johansson.
But Drake’s Fortune is something that Russell’s been loosely attached to since rumours began to bubble up in May about him tackling a film version of the game. Uncharted finds a descendent of Sir Francis Drake discovering danger, adventure, treasure and romance (not necessarily in that order) on a strange island. But though he entered talks to snatch the job, he never ended up taking it.
How things change (in, er, a matter of a month or so) – according to the LA Times, which talked to Sony, he’s now officially locked in and is planning to overhaul the script originally written by Cowboys and Aliens’ Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer, who must be getting used to being re-written after their work on the Jon Favreau film. But that does mean he’ll likely make Old St Louis next, which means the studio will have to wait a little longer. Perhaps Russell could send the executives a pony to make up for it.
While we’re still trying to wrap our noggins around the idea of the man behind Flirting With Disaster and even Three Kings making something that resembles an Indiana Jones movie, our intrigue-o-meter is still twitching away.