With its cinematic action sequences, quippy leading man, and globe-trotting brand of adventuring, Naughty Dog's Uncharted videogame series always felt ripe for the blockbuster treatment. However, when treasure hunting cheeky chappy Nathan Drake first made the leap to the big screen with Ruben Fleischer's aptly titled Uncharted back in 2022, the Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg starring caper roundly fell flat with critics despite nabbing a cool $407 million worldwide at the box office. But now the one-time heir apparent to Indiana Jones' booby-trapped throne is getting set for another, er, crack of the whip, with confirmation coming today that Uncharted 2 is in the Sony pipeline.
During a presentation at the 2024 CineEurope trade show earlier today, Sony’s president of international distribution Steven O’Dell gave an update on the many exciting projects the studio are currently working on, from Danny Boyle zombie sort-of sequel 28 Years Later to Sam Mendes' upcoming Beatles movies and Jason Reitman's SNL 1975. But there, buried like hidden treasure somewhere between Taika Waititi's Klara And The Sun and the studio's other big inbound videogame adaptation, Wes Ball's The Legend Of Zelda, was the first official word on the as-yet-untitled Uncharted 2. Sure, the acknowledgement of its existence came with no news on the director, new/returning cast (including Holland's Nathan Drake and Mark Wahlberg's Victor 'Sully' Sullivan), plot, production timeline, release date, or anything else for that matter, but we do now have concrete evidence that the return of Nate the Great (no, not that one Ted Lasso stans) is a-coming.
As fans of the 2022 movie will recall, Tom Holland's first outing as Nathan Drake ended with not one but two post-credits scenes. The first revealed that Nate's long-since missing-presumed-dead brother Sam is in fact alive and languishing in jail à la Uncharted 4, whilst the second — clearly teeing up a sequel that more closely mirrors the story of the first Uncharted game — sees our lovable rogue hero discussing Nazi maps with a new character, Gage, played by Pilou Asbaek. The last we saw, Gage turned out to be a wrong-un and Wahlberg's modern-day Fagin Sully saved Nate's tuchus, only for the pair to be cornered by an unseen figure. Who that figure could be — perhaps Nate's in-game lover and professional journo Elena? Or Sophia Ali's fellow fortune hunter Chloe? — is anybody's guess. But one thing's for sure, folks: we'll be finding out just as soon as Uncharted 2 hits our screens. And in the meantime, we hope Mark Wahlberg's been working on that 'tache — it looks like he's gonna need it!