games, I have to admit I've been a little surprised by the uproar from fans over the hiring of Mark Wahlberg to play adventurer/treasure seeker Nathan Drake. Some of the Twitter posts I've seen have been downright brutal towards director David O. Russell. In particular they seem to hate this idea of a group family dynamic, which would involve bringing in Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci as fellow members of the Drake clan. I guess it's not close enough to the video game storyline for some folks. Well, according to Justin Richmond, video game director for Uncharted 3, all of those ideas that the diehards seem to hate aren't going to happen anyway...
“First of all, all that stuff was denied by David O. Russell,” Richmond said. “He actually called us up and was like, ‘I don’t know what these guys are talking about.’”
"And Mark Wahlberg isn’t anywhere near to being confirmed to play Nathan Drake either — it’s just Hollywood scuttlebutt, apparently. Still, I dutifully told Richmond that the Joystiq Biomass had chosen, and Nathan Fillion has our vote. Message received, Richmond responded."
All that comes from an interview Richmond gave to Joystiq, and it completely flies in the face of everything we've already learned....from David O. Russell himself!
"This idea really turns me on that there’s a family that’s a force to be reckoned with in the world of international art and antiquities … [a family] that deals with heads of state and heads of museums and metes out justice… We’ll have the family dynamic, which we’ve done in a couple of movies now… And then you take that and put it on the bigger, more muscular stage of an international action picture, but also put all the character stuff in it. That’s a really cool idea to me."
Not to mention Wahlberg has confirmed not only his own involvement, but the family storyline as well...
So I got no idea what this Richmond guy is talkin' about, but I'm not totally convinced that some video game guy has any influence on a big budget movie franchise. He might just be puffing himself up to the guys he plays World of Warcraft with. So even if Wahlberg isn't quite signed yet, expect it to be made official sooner rather than later. And make sure you go check him out in The Fighter while it's still in theaters."That’s who he wants to write the parts for. I talked to Pesci about it and I know David’s people have talked to [Robert De Niro]… I’m obviously in whatever David wants to do but the idea of it is so off the charts: De Niro being my father, Pesci being my uncle. It’s not going to be the watered-down version, that’s for sure."
