By The Uncharted movie looks like it’s finally moving forward. Yes fellas, honestly and for reals this time. Joe Carnahan finished his screenplay not too long ago, and Shawn Levy was plucked from left field to direct. In an interview with Coming Soon, Carnahan promised the movie would be R-rated.
“I wrote it the way the video game is,” he explained to Max Evry of Coming Soon. “They swear in the game, they’re kinda foul-mouthed and I kept all that stuff intact and I definitely didn’t write it as a ‘PG-13’ movie, I wrote it the way that movie should be written.”
Evry and Carnahan added that movies like RoboCop, Predator, and The Matrix were both R-rated films that peopled loved growing up. “PG-13 in a lot of ways is a cop out, and I think its been exposed as such,” Carnahan said.
Carnahan also explained how he handled the action setpieces in his screenplay for Uncharted:
I probably wrote four of the biggest, f***in’ craziest action sequences I think I’ve ever written in that movie. I used the Uncharted games as a template but not using any one specifically, because those sequences have already been done beautifully. There’s no point in just transposing them to film, you’ve gotta come up with new sh*t, so that’s what I did. It was a great challenge but it was a lot of fun.
Will we get R-rated action in Uncharted? The biggest hurdles now are probably Sony and Shawn Levy. Levy’s not known for R-rated fare (credits include Night at the Museum, Cheaper by the Dozen, and Real Steel), and Sony may be risk averse to a movie that’s not PG-13. Hiring Levy may be an indication that whatever Carnahan has written might not make it to the final film, assuming it actually gets made this time around.
Check out the Coming Soon interview to find out how Carnahan differentiates Nathan Drake and Uncharted from Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark.
[via Coming Soon]