Although every video game fan has their dream castings when it comes to their favorite franchise, manyUnchartedfans are in agreement that there is no other choice but Nathan Fillion for Nathan Drake. The role feels tailor-made for Fillion, to the point that the Firefly and Castle actor tried to will his casting into existence via anUnchartedshort film.
But while the ship has likely sailed for Nathan Fillion to play Nathan Drake in anUnchartedfilm, one fan has delivered the next best thing. Using some very clever editing and CG work, YouTube creator Jarkan has created a deep fake video that replaces Drake’s video game face with Fillion’s actual face.
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The video itself is more disturbing that mostUnchartedfans would expect, likely because its a deep fake featuring a real person’s face in a video game world. Usually, deep fake videos swap one celebrity face for another in a live-action video, blending the finer details to make everything look as convincing as possible.
But in this video, Fillion’s face looks a little too good to match with theCG ofUncharted 4. The developers at Naughty Dog are certainly technical wizards and many parts of Uncharted 4 look photorealistic, but video games still aren’t fully “there” yet.
Still, the deep fake video reaffirms that there aren’t too many differences between the character of Nathan Drake and the types of roles that Nathan Fillion is known for playing. Wise-cracking action hero Mal Reynolds basically put Fillion on the map, and many felt like a lot of his mannerisms influenced the characterization of Drake. That and Indiana Jones, of course.
Even though the ship has sailed on landing the role of Nathan Drake in an Uncharted movie, Fillion might have dodged a bullet on one of the more tumultuous video game movie adaptations. Video game movies are notorious for being poor adaptations of their source material, but theUnchartedmovie has struggled to even get to production.Several directors have been hiredto handle the film, but each dropped out for various reasons.
Mark Wahlberg has been attached to the Uncharted movie for so long that he switched roles from Nathan Drake to Sully, and nowSpider-Manactor Tom Hollandis playing a younger version of the protagonist. Everything was ready to go for the Uncharted movie and production was finally going to start, and then the recent pandemic shut down all of Hollywood and the project once again was put on hiatus. Presumably, it will start back up once everything clears, but we wouldn’t be surprised if the pandemic threw another obstacle in the film’s way and kept it from ever being made.
