Dear Naughty Dog/Sony,
Pay attention to the people who made your franchise popular and want to see a movie adaptation of your game succeed.
Don't allow Columbia Pictures to destroy the acclaim that your series has garnered by letting them cast an actor who has shown no depth or acting ability relevant to the role of Nathan Drake. How many bad video game-movie adaptations must be made that fail solely for the casting of the lead before the movie companies start listening to the people who have played the games? These aren't books; we haven't had to form a mental idea of who the character is and what they look like in order to understand them. Our medium not only provides us with the chance to be shown what a character looks like, but we also learn alot of secondary information by how we act through them. We know fully what the character looks like, acts like, walks like, sounds like, etc. Why is it acceptable that video games based on movies use exact character likenesses and voice actors, but the same isn't expected of video game - movie adaptations?
Can you honestly tell us that you believe Mark Wahlberg is a good representation of Nathan Drake? Do you really think Nathan's bitter wit, supplemented with a constant smirk, will be able to be conveyed by Wahlberg without it seeming campy and forced? There are actors who are better suited for this role, and we all know it. It's time to stop allowing movie companies to tout the self-fulfilling prophecy that "video game movies don't sell". If they truly, honestly, want their movies to succeed, they will make sure that while opening the IP to a broader audience, they do every damn thing they can to show to the people that created the success of the franchise in the first place that they care about making as much of an accurate conversion as possible. Much like any adaptation, there's some room for interpretations, but at least get the damn basics right.
Here's a parting thought. Max Payne was a respected and acclaimed franchise before someone decided to take "fighting his own demons" too literally from the box art on the way to the movie studio. Not only was the movie an embarrassment to us as gamers, but it also irreparably sullied the name Max Payne; possibly to the point of killing the name.
Is it a coincidence that Max Payne 3 was cancelled?
Uncharted's success as a game has been largely related to the nature and banter of Nathan Drake. If you remove that with a poor actor casting, you remove a major component of what made the series entertaining, much like the result of making Max Payne a demon-hunter.
This casting will destroy this movie, and may possibly destroy your franchise. Please heed the warning, and do whatever you can to protect your creation - one that many of us have played and enjoyed - from being reduced to something that will only resemble Uncharted in name.
Signed,
Video Game Enthusiasts Worldwide
