'Uncharted' Movie To Be More Like 'Sopranos'? Video Game-Inspired Flick to Star Wahlberg, DeNiro, Pesci

If there is one thing we all learned from "The Social Network", it's to never, ever anger a nerd.

Yet director David O. Russell, who is now helming the movie adaptation of the "Uncharted" video game, is alienating the game's original fan base bit by bit. At the start, fans saw Nathan Fillion ("Castle") as the perfect fit for the lead role of Nathan Drake, but Mark Wahlberg was cast instead.

Fans were confused  by the choice (the role of the easygoing, sarcastic, too-cool Nathan Drake seemed out of the generally tightly-wound Wahlberg's range), but the general consensus seemed to be "well, we don't love it, but let's see how it goes."

Now, Russell has announced that he wants to cast Robert de Niro as Nathan's father and Joe Pesci as his uncle, and turn the Drake family into a crime family "like The Sopranos."

This is a far cry from the video game, in which Nathan Drake is a mostly-honest and lawful treasure hunter and a direct descendent of the explorer Sir Francis Drake, a plot point which factors heavily into the story of the first "Uncharted" game (which is subtitled "Drake's Fortune", as Nathan follows in Sir Francis Drake's footsteps in attempting to find a treasure). Nathan Drake, and in fact the entire storyline of "Drake's Fortune", plays sort of like a modern version of Indiana Jones.

Russell's statement in an interview with IGN sounded almost too silly to be true:

“I think if we take that family dynamic that we have in The Fighter, and put that in terms of a grander stage, with a crime family that metes out justice in the world of art and antiquities. If you’re the head of a museum, or head of state, you’ve got to deal with them, and they’re badass. They’re like The Sopranos in some ways, but they have great taste, and they have a sense of justice. I would love to do that with Mark [Wahlberg], Robert De Niro, and a couple of hot women, it could be very thrilling.”

Really? "A couple of hot women?" This is the director of "The Fighter", "Three Kings" and "I Heart Huckabees" that we're talking about, but he's starting to sound more like Michael Bay.

The only hope left is that the developers of the newest "Uncharted" game mentioned that Russell's reported approach to the material was mostly false. With this, though, it seems more or less set in stone. Russell mentions that both he and his son love playing the game, but with changes this fundamental, one has to wonder if he played them at all.