Hideo Kojima shared what he intends to do with the Death Stranding movie.
Before that, though, Kojima shared an interesting anecdote. He had planned a smaller project as the company’s first dip into Hollywood. It would have a been a smaller film project than the Death Stranding movie, and he already had a screenplay lined up for it.
Unfortunately, difficulties because of the pandemic have made it unfeasible, so he has cancelled the project, at least for now. Kojima talked about how Death Stranding 2 itself also had to change because of the situation.
Now Hideo Kojima doesn’t want the Death Stranding movie to be just like other video game movies. He feels that the way video game movies have been made so far is close to the video games themselves, primarily to cater to the natural audience for such movies, which are video game fans.
Kojima is more interested in treating Death Stranding as a multimedia project. With this in mind, the Death Stranding movie will not just be another version of the Death Stranding story in movie form. Instead, he wants it to be original material that will expand the Death Stranding world.
This is how Kojima describes his plans:
“The failure of film adaptations of games from a while back has led to a lot of movies that cater to gamers, right? That’s why they have the same kind of look as a game. I don’t want the Death Stranding movie to be like that. Rather, I’m taking the approach of changing and evolving the world of Death Stranding in a way that suits film well. I made Death Stranding to be a game, and games are games. There’s no real need to turn them into films. So in a way, the Death Stranding movie is taking a direction that nobody has tried before with a movie adaptation of a game. I think that what I need to make is something that will inspire some of the people who watch it to become creators 10 or 20 years down the line.”
Kojima also seeks to utilize the media of film to tell a story that’s best suited to its unique qualities. This arrangement isn’t all that different to when a group of companies in Japan plans a joint venture to launch a TV show for kids, with toys and animation as part of the mix.
This is to clarify, what Kojima is doing is common in the entertainment industry of the country where he is from, so he actually has a higher change to be successful than it may seem. There is also nothing particularly special or genius about Kojima recognizing the differences between movies and video games, as that’s the sort of thing people who make video game adaptations of movies have all had to think about to make their projects successful. As we have seen with the likes of Gyakuten Saiban, the Sonic movies and Detective Pikachu, it’s now clearly possible to make well liked and commercially successful films.
To make something that will inspire creators in 10 or 20 years, is to say that Kojima’s ambitions are for a timeless project. Auteurs like Kojima may not always get to the moon when they shoot for it, but the results are almost always interesting and entertaining.
Source: IGN