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A new screenwriter has been attached to the upcoming Uncharted movie, according to The Hollywood Reporter, and it shows that Sony is serious about making this a genuinely good movie.

Mark Boal is the writer in question, and he brings some heavyweight credibility with him. Boal is best known for penning The Hurt Locker, the Iraq war drama about a reckless bomb disposal expert that made Jeremy Renner a star. That movie earned six Oscars, including Best Original Screenplay.

Boal went on to collaborate with Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow again on the 2013 movie Zero Dark Thirty, about Seal Team 6 and the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. That was also Oscar nominated, as was Boal's first movie, the Tommy Lee Jones drama In the Valley of Elah.

A former journalist, all of Boal's movies so far have been based around modern conflict in the Middle East, but it's doubtful that will be a plot point in the Uncharted film. Boal has been hired to do a “three week production polish” which usually means he'll be punching up the dialogue and characters rather than changing the storyline. Boal is apparently a fan of the games, and the movie is still being pitched as a “swashbuckling adventure” in the style of Indiana Jones.

The film is currently slated for June 2016, which means we'll likely see the next game in the series – the PS4 exclusive Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, due next year – before the movie arrives.