10 Lost Cities The Uncharted Film Could Explore

It seems like a decade ago that we first heard that we were getting an Uncharted movie. Why? Because it was. Actually, it was eleven years ago.

Announced in 2009, the film's ups and downs -- including shuffling through multiple directors -- have been frequent and severe.

Though it's gotten some traction recently -- Tom Holland was cast as Nate, Mark Wahlberg as Sully, and Antonio Banderas as, well, someone -- the film's production has been pushed back ONCE AGAIN due to the global COVID-19 outbreak.

At this point, the Uncharted film is starting to feel like something out of one of the games -- that is, a fabled, mysterious, oft-detailed artifact that has thus far eluded our gaze.

The Uncharted games have differentiated themselves from Indiana Jones, in that while Indiana Jones usually goes after artifacts, Nathan Drake and company hunt down lost cities (i.e. Shambhala, Ubar, and Libertalia), with artifacts like the Cintamani Stone from Uncharted 2 taking a back seat to the spectacle of ancient, legendary locales.

If we're following trends, the movie will do the same. But what lost city can we expect? Luckily, history has given us a lot to choose from. We've narrowed it down to ten.

Don't expect to see Atlantis on this list, as it's been done to death. Also, don't expect to see any of the lost cities already covered in the games, as it's been stated that the film won't be a retread of any preexisting story.

When you hear "lost city", you probably picture thick, impenetrable jungles, towering, snow-capped mountains, or deserts that stretch uninterrupted from horizon to horizon. That's not the case with the Kingdom of Opona.

In Russian folklore, Opona is said to lie at the edge of the flat Earth, where it is only accessible to the most courageous of explorers (i.e. Nathan Drake). A common tale among Russian peasantry, it was believed that the inhabitants of Opona -- also known as the Golden Land or Belovodye -- lived happy, peaceful lives, undisturbed by the state, or by the state's noble, ruling class. Instead, they were presided over by a "White Tsar", who ruled according to ancient, just ideals.

In many ways, northern Russia is among the planet's last frontiers. It is INCREDIBLY sparsely populated, with less than 35 million people in an area almost twice the size of the continental United States (which hosts over 300 million people).

The film could see Holland's Drake traversing the snow-bitten Chersky Mountains, or possibly the vast wilderness of Siberia, which hosts random explosions attributable to underground methane pockets.

It could even tie in the lost Library of the Czars, supposedly created by Ivan the Terrible.