Uncharted: The Movie!

This is one of those days where I'm happy to be a movie geek. One of my favorite video games of all time is being turned into a movie - I'm speaking, of course, about Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.

The game is so awesome - I can't recommend it highly enough. Nathan Drake, descendant of Sir Francis Drake and treasure hunter extraordinaire, goes on a quest for El Dorado along with a stubborn hottie (obvs) filming a documentary. When rival treasure hunters get involved, it turns into an all-out dash for the treasure.

It's almost as if it were made to be adapted; the game was so cinematic that if they transcribed the script and added a few scenes here and there it would be perfect. If Nathan Fillion (Serenity, "Firefly") becomes attached to star, this could go down as my most anticipated film since The Expendables. PLEASE - somebody out there with some Hollywood casting power - make this happen. This has a legit shot at becoming the first great video game movie adaptation.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves drops for PS3 in November of 2009.

Ryan Reynolds is Buried

Nice beard, bro. Russell Crowe would be ashamed.

Now this sounds like an awesome project. Sarcastic man's man (and newlywed husband of Scarlett Johansson) Ryan Reynolds has signed on for a film called Buried for Spanish director Rodrigo Cortes.

Reynolds' character is a civilian contractor who is captured in Iraq and wakes up buried in a coffin in the middle of the desert. As if that isn't enough, the only items he has on him are a candle, a knife, and a cell phone. The movie will be shot entirely in Spain.

Michael Bay Leaves Transformers?

Hot on the heels of the ridic technical stats from T2: Revenge of the Fallen, Michael Bay is making headlines again. In semi-shocking news, Bay told wenn.com (via IMDB) that Transformers 2 will be his last directorial entry into the series.

Speculation arose a while back about Bay's future film intentions, but I don't know if anyone actually saw this coming. True, I suppose the exiting of writers Kurtzman and Orci from the franchise (they said they won't be writing the third film, if there is one) could have been a sign of things to come from the boom-happy director, but I honestly thought he'd stick around for one more and top off the trilogy. But he was pretty clear about his stance:

"After three and a half years of making these movies, I feel like I've had enough of the Transformers world. I need to do something totally divergent, something without any explosions."

I'm not sure how reliable this source is, but I would imagine that they wouldn't just conjure up a quote out of thin air, so I guess we can take this as truth until proven otherwise. Slashfilm suggested that Bay's small project with no explosions would be Pain & Gain, based on a couple of Miami bodybuilders who get involved in a drug deal gone bad.

I guess it would be wrong of us as an audience to demand that Bay make the same type of film over and over again, refusing to allow him to stretch his creative wings. But at the same time, that type of movie is what he's great at doing and is a proven way to make some money for the studios. It'll be interesting to see who will greenlight a Bay film that doesn't fit the profile. In my mind, this next project will be like a concept album for a singer - if it works, it'll establish some indie cred, and if it tanks, he'll go right back to the bread and butter.

UPDATE 6/19/09 - Well, it's a good thing I put a question mark in this title. Apparently the source DID conjure this quote out of thin air. Michael Bay responded today by saying he never said that and merely talked about taking a vacation. It's good to know that he appreciates his place in pop culture and isn't completely separating himself from the type of projects he's simultaneously loved and hated for.

Machete Actually Happening?

Robert Rodriguez has been getting some bad habits from his buddy Tarantino over the past few years, announcing projects and kind of bailing on them after a while. Granted, not much of that was his fault per se, but the fact remains that Sin City 2 is nowhere near being made and his remake of Barbarella has died a horrible death.

Good news, then, that Danny Trejo told Gordon and The Whale (via Slashfilm) that Rodriguez and Co. are starting production on Machete within five weeks. Machete, if you'll recall, is the ultra-awesome explotation trailer featured in 2007's Grindhouse. I'm glad we're definitely going to see this, whether it comes to theaters (not likely) or direct-to-DVD (much more likely). Trejo is fantastic in these roles, and it seems like a project where Rodriguez can have some good old fashioned fun directing it (or, to be more specific, co-directing it with his editor).

You can refresh your memory with the trailer here, although I can't verify that this link will work. I'll fix it later on tonight if it doesn't work.

DiCaprio Joins Poker Stars?

The guys who wrote Rounders, Brian Koppelman and David Levien, have sold an untitled pitch to Paramount about online casinos, and Leonardo DiCaprio and his Appian Way Productions have signed on to star and produce. Those dudes beat the "poker craze" by a good five years with Rounders, so maybe they'll be able to recapture that feeling with this new flick. They've worked on other projects since then (Walking Tall, Ocean's 13, The Girlfriend Experience, etc), so it'll be interesting to see if they just wanted to go back to the basics here.

In related news, the whole package (DiCaprio, Appian Way, Koppelman, and Levien) have teamed up for Beat the Reaper, which I mentioned back in January. To jog your memory: that one's about a former-mafia-hitman-turned-doctor who goes into witness protection, but is recognized years later by a patient who is still in the mafia. Sounds pretty clutch to me. And since we're on the DiCaprio train right now, check out the trailer for Scorsese's newest, Shutter Island (which comes out in October of this year), over at Ben's Movie Reviews.

LaBeouf Says No To Y: The Last Man

I know it's been a hot minute since I've updated this page, but this post completely defines the type of stuff that I do on this site. I post things that I find interesting and I don't bother with every insignificant update that floods the internet on a daily basis. For all of those updates, you can check out my man Head Hero's blog here. (I'm not saying that he deals ONLY with insignificant things, because he covers the good stuff, too. But the amount of coverage he provides just isn't my bag. I could care less about half of that stuff, and I know you guys don't give a crap either.)

Shia LaBeouf has turned down the role of Yorick Brown in DJ Caruso's long-in-development adaptation of Y: The Last Man. Such a shame, but Shia's got a point on this one: he says the character is too similar to Sam Witwicky from the Transformers movies.

"You take Sam and you put a monkey on his shoulder. I don't know if that's a big differential. It seems like he's the ordinary guy in an extraordinary situation again. I'm not willing to make that movie currently, and may be too old to play the role by the time it does come around."

As much as I would have loved to see Shia in this role, I guess he's right. If he has any chance of breaking out of his stereotype and not coming down with a bad case of Michael Cera syndrome, he needs to start taking some parts that are a little off the beaten path for him. Here's hoping he finds a good one soon.