Ghost of Tsushima Director Talks Movie Adaptation

It’s always good to know that there is hope for continuous great things after a particularly great thing emerges. By that, we’re talking about video game movies and TV shows. Over the last few years, we’ve had multiple great video game movies/shows from great teams that understood the lore and did everything they could to be both fun, original, and loyal to what came before. Oh, and we’re not talking about Master Chief and his TV series. Why? Well, we’re just not. But the ones that did succeed gave birth to the potential for films like the adaptation of Ghost of Tsushima to happen.

Ghost of Tsushima is easily one of the best video games of the last decade, if not of all time. So it getting into the movie space is potentially great if done right.

Thankfully, director Chad Stahelski seems to grasp what it takes to make a good adaptation. Not to mention, he’s responsible for some of the best movies in recent times, the John Wick films. In a chat with ComicBookMovie, he discussed the challenge that was before him and how he was fighting to overcome it:

“The trick is not, ‘do we have great material?’ We know we have great material. It’s how to make it palpable in any platform, you know, how do we make a great two, two and a half hour movie out of this? [How do we] make it satisfying and leave it open to expand further from there? That’s the real challenge: how to take so much great and get it down to a watchable level.”

That is often a challenge with video game properties. Sometimes they have expansive lore that takes dozens of hours to get through and understand, and this game was no different.

Stahelski also teased that there could be potential for TV spinoffs due to how much information and lore there is in the game. Whether that comes to pass is another story, but the game is rather large, and there are ways that spinoffs could work if handled properly.

But many game fans are interested in how the swordplay will be handled in the movie. After all, Ghost of Tsushima is famous for its duel scenes. But remember, Stahelski headed up movies starring legendary assassin John Wick, and the latest movie had some of the best fight scenes ever. A few of them featured swords! So we’re positive he knows how to make it work and look cool.