‘Uncharted’ To Top The Box Office Charts
On Monday, Spider-Man: No Way Home crawled its way past Avatar’s $760.5 million to become the third highest domestic grosser of all time. With that milestone reached, the baton is ready to be passed to Sony’s Uncharted, the long-awaited video game adaptation that also gives Tom Holland his biggest role yet outside of the MCU. The adventure film, which co-stars Mark Wahlberg, should spark things up at the box office after what has been a soft start to the year.
Ruben Fleischer directs Uncharted after having successfully launched the Venom franchise for Sony (not to mention hitting the jackpot with the Zombieland films). The Indiana Jones-esque tale acts as a prequel to the games, telling the story of a young version of Nathan Drake (played by Holland) before he becomes the full-fledged, world-class treasure hunting hero. He is taken under the wing of Sully (Wahlberg) to find the lost treasure of the Magellan expedition. Sophia Ali, Tati Gabrielle and Antonio Banderas play supporting parts in the hopeful franchise starter.
The Uncharted video game series started in 2007 with Uncharted: Drake's Fortune for the PlayStation 3. The franchise has since become a major success for Sony, with a total of over 40 million copies sold worldwide, and the last main series game Uncharted 4: A Thief's End was the biggest yet, selling over 15 million copies. It has been a long road to the big screen for the series, and attempts for an adaptation began shortly after the first game came out. A decade and many directors ago, Wahlberg was set to play Nathan Drake, only for the project to change hands and shape numerous times before getting to Tom Holland as a young version of the character, with Wahlberg back as the mentor/sidekick.
Uncharted is actually Tom Holland’s first major starring role in a live action film outside of the MCU. Since he debuted as Peter Parker in Captain America: Civil War in 2016, Holland voiced the lead characters in Spies in Disguise and Onward, and he also starred in the Russo brothers’ Cherry, which released on Apple TV+, and Antonio Campos’ The Devil All the Time, which released on Netflix. Despite staying busy, Uncharted will be the first real test of his star power at the box office when he isn’t portraying the beloved superhero.
Unfortunately, Holland’s first big non Spider-Man outing has not been received well by critics. It stands at 40% on Rotten Tomatoes, with many reviews faulting it for being derivative and failing to capture the fun of the games. That may not deter any fans of the game or Holland fans still high on Spidey-fever, though, and if it can pass $30.02 million this weekend it will beat Scream to become the year’s biggest opener yet (admittedly a record that would only last until The Batman opens in two weeks). A good comp is Jungle Cruise, which opened to $35 million last summer (despite being on Disney+) and went on to gross $117 million.
Uncharted began its overseas rollout last weekend with 15 markets including the U.K., Russia, and Spain. It is off to a strong start thus far, taking a lead over all of the non-Spidey MCU films of 2021 when comparing openings in like for like markets, and its global tally is $21.5 million. The international rollout continues this weekend, with major markets including Germany, France, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, and Korea. It will also be opening in China on March 14, though No Way Home never released there so Uncharted may not get the same Holland-mania box office bump, assuming such a bump occurs anywhere.
Second place will likely be the weekend’s other newcomer Dog, which is bowing (and bow-wowing) into 3,677 theaters courtesy of United Artists. The film is the directorial debut of Channing Tatum and Reid Carolin. Carolin, who produced numerous Tatum projects and who also wrote the Magic Mike films, is responsible for the screenplay. Tatum stars as an army ranger in the buddy road trip comedy in which one of the mismatched leads is a military dog that Tatum’s character must take cross-country so it can attend the funeral of its former handler.
Tatum’s career has been quiet lately, and Dog is his first live action starring role since 2017. Despite having some of the same creative voices behind the films, Dog doesn’t seem to have the buzz or high wattage supporting cast that made the Magic Mike films such phenomenons, but it has a good chance of going above $10 million, besting Logan Lucky ($7.6 million) and possibly Hail, Caesar! ($11.4 million). Only a trickling of reviews are in, but so far they are almost entirely positive (90% on Rotten Tomatoes).
Also going wide is the indie period horror film The Cursed from LD Entertainment. The Sean Ellis (Anthropoid, Metro Manila) directed film is about a village in 19th century France that is terrorized by a werewolf. It premiered at Sundance in 2021 and received a positive critical response (78% on Rotten Tomatoes).
Well Go USA is releasing Chinese comedy Too Cool to Kill in limited. The film released in China on the Chinese New Year and grossed $217 million, making it the second highest grossing release of 2022 worldwide.
Ruben Fleischer directs Uncharted after having successfully launched the Venom franchise for Sony (not to mention hitting the jackpot with the Zombieland films). The Indiana Jones-esque tale acts as a prequel to the games, telling the story of a young version of Nathan Drake (played by Holland) before he becomes the full-fledged, world-class treasure hunting hero. He is taken under the wing of Sully (Wahlberg) to find the lost treasure of the Magellan expedition. Sophia Ali, Tati Gabrielle and Antonio Banderas play supporting parts in the hopeful franchise starter.
The Uncharted video game series started in 2007 with Uncharted: Drake's Fortune for the PlayStation 3. The franchise has since become a major success for Sony, with a total of over 40 million copies sold worldwide, and the last main series game Uncharted 4: A Thief's End was the biggest yet, selling over 15 million copies. It has been a long road to the big screen for the series, and attempts for an adaptation began shortly after the first game came out. A decade and many directors ago, Wahlberg was set to play Nathan Drake, only for the project to change hands and shape numerous times before getting to Tom Holland as a young version of the character, with Wahlberg back as the mentor/sidekick.
Uncharted is actually Tom Holland’s first major starring role in a live action film outside of the MCU. Since he debuted as Peter Parker in Captain America: Civil War in 2016, Holland voiced the lead characters in Spies in Disguise and Onward, and he also starred in the Russo brothers’ Cherry, which released on Apple TV+, and Antonio Campos’ The Devil All the Time, which released on Netflix. Despite staying busy, Uncharted will be the first real test of his star power at the box office when he isn’t portraying the beloved superhero.
Unfortunately, Holland’s first big non Spider-Man outing has not been received well by critics. It stands at 40% on Rotten Tomatoes, with many reviews faulting it for being derivative and failing to capture the fun of the games. That may not deter any fans of the game or Holland fans still high on Spidey-fever, though, and if it can pass $30.02 million this weekend it will beat Scream to become the year’s biggest opener yet (admittedly a record that would only last until The Batman opens in two weeks). A good comp is Jungle Cruise, which opened to $35 million last summer (despite being on Disney+) and went on to gross $117 million.
Uncharted began its overseas rollout last weekend with 15 markets including the U.K., Russia, and Spain. It is off to a strong start thus far, taking a lead over all of the non-Spidey MCU films of 2021 when comparing openings in like for like markets, and its global tally is $21.5 million. The international rollout continues this weekend, with major markets including Germany, France, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, and Korea. It will also be opening in China on March 14, though No Way Home never released there so Uncharted may not get the same Holland-mania box office bump, assuming such a bump occurs anywhere.
Second place will likely be the weekend’s other newcomer Dog, which is bowing (and bow-wowing) into 3,677 theaters courtesy of United Artists. The film is the directorial debut of Channing Tatum and Reid Carolin. Carolin, who produced numerous Tatum projects and who also wrote the Magic Mike films, is responsible for the screenplay. Tatum stars as an army ranger in the buddy road trip comedy in which one of the mismatched leads is a military dog that Tatum’s character must take cross-country so it can attend the funeral of its former handler.
Tatum’s career has been quiet lately, and Dog is his first live action starring role since 2017. Despite having some of the same creative voices behind the films, Dog doesn’t seem to have the buzz or high wattage supporting cast that made the Magic Mike films such phenomenons, but it has a good chance of going above $10 million, besting Logan Lucky ($7.6 million) and possibly Hail, Caesar! ($11.4 million). Only a trickling of reviews are in, but so far they are almost entirely positive (90% on Rotten Tomatoes).
Also going wide is the indie period horror film The Cursed from LD Entertainment. The Sean Ellis (Anthropoid, Metro Manila) directed film is about a village in 19th century France that is terrorized by a werewolf. It premiered at Sundance in 2021 and received a positive critical response (78% on Rotten Tomatoes).
Well Go USA is releasing Chinese comedy Too Cool to Kill in limited. The film released in China on the Chinese New Year and grossed $217 million, making it the second highest grossing release of 2022 worldwide.
