After the much-publicised, creative differences-fuelled departure of David O Russell from the video game adaptation Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, producers Avi Arad, Charles Roven and Alex Gartner have been scouting around for someone new to sit in the big folding chair. Now it looks like they have their man, with Limitless director Neil Burger in negotiation to take on the job.
Burger, who also directed The Illusionist (the Edward Norton magician drama, not the ‘toon) and The Lucky Ones, apparently impressed the producers and the bosses at Sony with his take on the material, which means he’ll be writing another new draft of the script originally penned by Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer.
The studio is itching to get moving on the film, which it is no doubt hoping will launch an Indiana Jone****s-style franchise about the rugged Nathan Drake, a descendant of Sir Frances Drake, who goes on the quest to find the lost treasure of El Dorado (the lost city of gold, not the long since cancelled BBC soap opera).
Though Mark Wahlberg was considering playing Drake when Russell was in the director’s chair, it’s unknown whether he’d still want to star now that his good friend is no longer shepherding the film. Still, Burger has proved he’s a solid filmmaker and perhaps it’ll give other people a chance to win the lead role. That sound you hear is Nathan Fillion’s agent planning the world’s biggest cupcake basket delivery for Burger’s house.