Uncharted Movie: Chris Pratt Passes on Lead as Oscar-Winning Zero Dark Thirty Writer Hired

Guardians of the Galaxy breakout star Chris Pratt has turned down the lead role in Sony's video game adaptation Uncharted.

It isn't all bad news for the troubled project however as Mark Boal, the Oscar-winning writer of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, has been hired to work on the film's screenplay.

How extensive Boal's work on the script will be isn't known, but his hiring shows signs of life in a film that has been in gestation at Sony for a long time.

Horrible Bosses and Identity Thief director Seth Gordon is the man currently at the helm following the departure of awards-season regular David O. Russell and his prospective star Mark Wahlberg.

Developed by Sony studio Naughty Dog, the Uncharted series follows an adventuring descendent of Sir Francis Drake – Nathan Drake – around the world during his Indiana Jones-style adventures. The successful PlayStation 3 trilogy will be followed up next year with Uncharted 4: A Thief's End.

Celebrated for its confident storytelling, great motion-capture acting and fun script, the series' tone is best likened to a cross between Steve Spielberg's Indy and Bruce Willis action series Die Hard. The original game, Drake's Fortune, centres on the heroes' search for El Dorado.

Sony is also in the process of getting a film about another Naughty Dog property, last year's post-apocalyptic classic-on-arrival The Last of Us. The script for that project is being written by the game's writer Neil Druckmann.