WIRE Buzz: Uncharted shut down on first day; Minions: Rise of Gru & Wicked delayed

Few recent films have weathered as many production setbacks as Uncharted. The video game adaptation starring Tom Holland as a young version of franchise lead Nathan Drake has changed hands more times than an ancient relic in a room full of treasure hunters — and now it’s been delayed again thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. That’s to be expected, as the impact it’s had on the industry at large has postponed or otherwise shut down almost all new projects. But the Holland- and Mark Wahlberg-led film especially stings because, after all its obstacles, it was so close to getting started.

Holland himself explained how close to reality shooting the PlayStation adaptation was during a live Instagram Q&A with, strangely enough, musician Justin Bieber. Recorded by a devoted Belieber (is that still what Justin Bieber fans are called?), the conversation between the two spilled a few details about the production of Uncharted:

"We went for day one — I'm doing this movie called Uncharted, which is based on a video game — and we showed up for our first day of shooting and they shut us down," Holland said during the talk. "I was in Berlin, so I had to come home and now I'm back in London."

The very. First. Day. A truly cursed production. Director Ruben Fleischer’s take on the project will presumably hit theaters someday, but probably not its scheduled March 5, 2021, date.

Next, there have also been a handful of new release date delays due to the ongoing pandemic and its impact on production — this time, mostly animated films and those from Universal and Illumination.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sing 2 and Minions: The Rise of Gru have found new dates. The Minions follow-up and Despicable Me prequel was originally placed in July ... and it still is! Only now it’s July 2, 2021, a year after it was supposed to hit theaters. That set off a chain reaction of scheduling conflicts. It bumped Sing 2, which held that date, back to December 22, 2021. That left the Wicked film adaptation, which was set for Dec. 22, without a definite new timeframe.

The Rise of Gru was left in the wind when many animation houses, including Illumination’s Paris studio, shut down, which means the Minions franchise entry is still incomplete. Another year of work allows for lots of unforeseen problems — something that extends to the other dominoes that fell.

Finally, April 1 is a strange and often foolish day to release a new trailer for a new show ... but when it comes to Adult Swim, most of its animation looks like it could be part of an R-rated April Fool’s joke anyway. But don’t worry, JJ Villard's Fairy Tales is no prank. The skewed, violent, and absolutely bananas take on these bedtime stories (like Little Red Riding Hood) are sure to please the sicko within fans.

Take a look at the first trailer below:

Brothers Grimm? How about Brothers Grimm “as f***,” as the trailer so delicately puts it. 

The Emmy-winning Villard (for King Star King) is also voicing some characters during the quarter-hour series, joining a cast that includes some heavy hitters: Linda Blair, Warwick Davis, Robert Englund, Corey Feldman, Alan Oppenheimer, Jennifer Tilly. There are some real genre legends in there, making puke and murder jokes on this fairy-tale show.

JJ Villard's Fairy Tales airs on May 10 at 12:15 a.m. (so technically May 11).