Dare we say – are movie theaters back? With the pandemic shutting the world down and threatening the very existence of movie theaters as we know them, many wondered whether or not Hollywood could recover from the massive hit it took when the entire industry was forced to go dark. Luckily, now that society can finally see the light at the end of the covid-19 tunnel, Hollywood and theaters have started to pick up right where there left off – giving fans and audiences a surplus of entertaining and enchanting material.
The quick progress that has been made is promising for an industry that not long ago was pondering whether movie theaters were a thing of the past. Studios have made bold statements by giving theatrical releases to big-budget productions rather than opting for the easier/safer streaming-service releases. One such project was the recent Uncharted film, a live-action adaptation of the popular video-game franchise of the same name.
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Even though Uncharted was released to poor critical and audience reception, the studio still plans to go ahead with not just a sequel but a whole franchise. The Uncharted lore used to make this movie is rich with stories and capable of creating a lot of new narratives. The studio only sees potential for a greater number of films and what matters to producers, in the end, is profit. While they didn’t make much of it, Uncharted made enough to be rated a technical success. Unfortunately, some fans see it as an unfortunate setback in adaptations of enjoyable video games.
Updated by Ted Bajer August 2022: If you’re wondering about Sony creating an Uncharted franchise, you’ll be happy to know that we’ve updated this article with more information.
Uncharted’s Box Office Results
Sony Pictures Releasing
Uncharted, a buddy-adventure film starring Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg as main characters Nathan Drake and Sully as they try to find a recover a lost, 500-year-old fortune, had all the working parts to be a success. An established I.P. to base the film on, A-list talent, and a budget big enough to match the visuals of the video game. The movie held a top spot at the weekend box office. Fortunately, thanks to all of these elements, the film was a success… kind of. With a budget of $120 million, Uncharted’s box office performance was quite admirable, pulling in a respectable $337 million worldwide, nearly tripling its budget.
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However, that number is deceiving (and worrying) in many ways. First off, the $120 million budget does not account for any marketing or PR that the studio spent in order to get audiences hyped for the film. Now, it’s true that studios were paying much more for advertising pre-covid, with big-budget studios spending upwards of over $100 million on commercials, branding, etc. However, the marketing for Uncharted still couldn’t have been cheap.
Another issue with the $337 million is that the movie premiered in February when most of the world wasn’t locked down or forced to wear masks when they went out. Several movies last year (every MCU movie, James Bond, F9, Dune, etc.) had a better overall box office haul than Uncharted, and that was at a time when much fewer people were venturing out into public.
Riding a Tom Holland High
Sony Pictures Releasing/Marvel Studios
It’s no secret that Tom Holland has catapulted to the forefront of Hollywood stardom, quickly going from a no-name actor to an A-lister over a span of barely five years. Spider-Man has unquestionably been his biggest claim to fame, but he’s riding the wave out as long as he can and has lent his acting skills to several other big-name projects, such as The Lost City of Z, Dolittle, Onward, and many more. Uncharted recognized the attention Holland was getting and quickly decided that he would be the best choice to play Nathan Drake. That was a brilliant move on the studio’s part. But even more brilliant was releasing Uncharted so close to Spider-Man: No Way Home.
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The most recent MCU project crushed box office expectations by garnering $1.8 billion worldwide, becoming the third most profitable MCU film ever and the sixth most profitable film of all time. Much of that success goes to Marvel, but a bigger chunk goes to Holland, an actor whose charisma and on-screen chemistry with his counterparts are so palpable that audiences never want to stop watching. So, when MCU fans saw that Holland had another big-budget movie coming out just a couple of months after No Way Home, they were willing to buy tickets and see the film (even if they had no idea what it was about) just to get another two hours of Tom Holland.
It’s also noteworthy that thanks to the Tom Holland high, Uncharted had better opening weekends than every other MCU film released last year (Black Widow, Shang-Chi, and Eternals) yet finished with worse box office numbers than all of them as well. With that in mind, unless Uncharted plans on duplicating that strategy and releasing a sequel after Spider-Man 4, it might not be the wisest move to revisit Nathan Drake in a cinematic setting.
Why Studios Will Still Make These Movies
Despite the aforementioned reasoning, Sony will still force its way through with the Uncharted I.P. The movie did technically recover its manufacturing costs, and while it wasn’t as big as a popular Marvel title, that isn’t what the studio cares about. Sony will keep making Uncharted movies because it was such a big international success.
These sorts of things happen with video game movies. It’s why we’re getting a Detective Pikachu 2. Despite critics taking the film down a peg, the worldwide audience really enjoyed it and made more than 2/3rds of its total sales. The movie will likely still suffer in a domestic theatrical release but will eventually recoup its losses by the effort it puts in overseas. Looking at cinema as a whole, movies like Uncharted are made specifically to be sold to a particular demographic. They aren’t art, but they make Sony money, so Sony will keep making them.
