Sony has been on a consistent streak of publishing high-quality narrative-based games for its PlayStation platform. One of the more recent hits, Ghost of Tsushima, has been met with major critical and commercial success, and it looks like the platform holder now wants to capitalize on that. Last year, it was announced that a movie is being made based on Ghost of Tsushima. As it turns out, the team in charge may be striving for authenticity with the movie too, as the director wants it to be made fully in Japanese.
Chad Stahelski is directing the Ghost of Tsushima movie, previously working on John Wick. The movie is being written by Takashi Doscher, who has worked on movies like Only and Still. In an interview with Collider, Stahelski talks about his approach and vision for the movie. He mentions that he wants the film to be character-driven and “visually stunning,” which would make sense given the focus on those aspects in the game. More interestingly, Stahelski talks about his desire to make the film with a completely Japanese cast and an entirely Japanese script. The director claims that Sony approves of his ideas.
When it comes to Stahelski’s reasons for doing this, he discusses his own love of Japan and its culture. “I’ve been going to Japan since I was 16. I have a love of the country, love of the people, love of the language,” he said.
Making a movie in a foreign language is typically a harder task for mainstream Hollywood, as there is a risk that people will not want to read subtitles. As an example, Marvel’s Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings took place in China for much of its runtime, but the characters spoke in English for large parts of it. Stahelski is aware that this could pose a problem for the Ghost of Tsushima movie.
“No one is going to give me $200 million to do a technology-push movie without speaking English. I get it.” However, the director feels confident that he can get viewers interested as long as he “nails the other bits.” He also mentions that American audiences may be getting used to the idea of subtitles thanks to the worldwide content available on streaming services like Netflix.
Sony expanding its first-party game franchises is becoming more of a frequent occurrence. It has recently been porting more and more of its games to PC, such as Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, and God of War. There is also a TV show for The Last of Us in development.
We have yet to receive any official word about the sequel to Ghost of Tsushima, but it’s likely that Sucker Punch Productions is hard at work on the follow-up to Jin Sakai’s first outing.
