The recently released film adaption of Uncharted might not be a one-and-done movie as Sony Pictures declared the IP as a “new hit movie franchise for the company” following the film’s $100 million box office success over this past weekend.
In a company-wide memo, Sony Pictures group chairman and CEO Tom Rothman spoke to the video game adaption’s performance at the movie theatres despite being in a pandemic, according to Deadline. It is even suggested in the email that the film isn’t Nate and Sully’s last adventure on the big screen which was hinted at in a post-credit scene.
“With over $100 million in box office worldwide in just one weekend, and a 90% positive audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, Uncharted is a new hit movie franchise for the company”, Rothman said in an email.
“This marks a great victory for every single division of the company, as the film was our first major production entirely shut down by the advent of Covid, yet we persevered to complete a picture the audience loves and marketed and distributed it with strategic verve worldwide, despite the pandemic.”
The CEO ends the email by thanking everyone involved in Uncharted‘s production including “all of the filmmakers, the wonderful cast and crew, and especially our friends at PlayStation Studios and Sony Interactive Entertainment for their support.” He adds by also thanking everyone for their “creativity, dedication and belief.”
The Uncharted film was initially released in 15 markets starting on February 11th with a US release following on February 18th. Since then the movie has accumulated $139 million at the worldwide box office surpassing the movie’s $120 million budget. The film has reportedly accumulated $44 million at the US box office and is the fourth-biggest opening weekend for a video game adaption, with Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), Detective Pikachu (2019) and Tomb Raider (2001) having bigger openings than the recently released 2022 film.
The release has been a long time coming as the video game film adaption has been in development hell since 2008. No official word on if director, Ruben Fleischer will be coming back for a follow-up nor Tom Holland’s Nate and Mark Wallberg’s Sully.
