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How Tom Holland's failed James Bond origin story pitch led to the 'Uncharted' movie
Tom Holland's journey to Nathan Drake began with a pitch for a 007 prequel.
With Daniel Craig's tenure as Agent 007 finally concluded after more than a decade, fans everywhere are eagerly speculating over who might be the next James Bond. Then there's Tom Holland, who not very long ago had the idea that he could perhaps be the first James Bond...sort of.
In a new interview with Total Film, Holland explained that back in the days of Spider-Man: Far From Home, he went to Sony Pictures executives to pitch an original idea for a new James Bond film. It didn't go over very well.
"It was the origin story of James Bond," Holland said. "It didn’t really make sense. It didn’t work. It was the dream of a young kid, and I don’t think the Bond estate were particularly interested."
Around the same time that Holland was pitching his origin story idea, the Bond estate had already sanctioned their own new version of Bond's early days, just not on the big screen. In 2018, Dynamite Entertainment began publishing James Bond: Origin, a new comics series written by Jeff Parker and drawn by Bob Quinn, which explored how Bond's service in the Royal Navy during World War II translated to his career as a spy. Which isn't to say that there could never be a Bond origin film, but with Craig still working at the time to finish up his run as the character, it's possible the Powers That Be in the Bond just didn't want to muddy the waters.
Still, as is so often the case in Hollywood, Holland's pitch did translate to another project. In talking about Bond's origin story with Sony, both Holland and studio executives got interested in an origin for an entirely different character: Nathan Drake, hero of Uncharted.
"The idea of a young Bond film sparked this idea, in turn, that you could do a Nathan Drake story as an origin story, rather than as an addition to the games," Holland said. "And that opened a conversation."
That conversation has finally, years later, translated to the first Uncharted movie. Holland stars as burgeoning explorer and treasure hunter Drake, alongside his would-be mentor Victor "Sully" Sullivan, played by Mark Wahlberg. Together, they'll try to launch a new action-adventure franchise based on one of the most popular video game series of the last 20 years. We'll find out if they pull it off when Uncharted hits theaters February 18.
