After a decade since its official announcement, producer Avi Arad has shared an update on the Metal Gear Solid movie.
It may seem like this was once just a twinkle in Hideo Kojima’s eye, but when he announced the Metal Gear Solid movie all the way back in 2012, that was a project in the works in Hollywood, and it has survived his exit from Konami.
For those who needed a refresher, this movie has been connected with Avi Arad as one of the producers, Jordan Vogt-Roberts as the director, and Oscar Isaac as one of the main cast, possibly playing Solid Snake himself. But neither Konami nor the Hollywood production company involved gave us consistent updates on the status of the film, and it was safe to assume that the project had entered development hell.
We gave a rundown of that long history of stagnant updates here, when the last update we received from Oscar Isaac from two years ago that “We want it to happen.” Now, Avi Arad himself has stepped up with the next update.
Speaking to Brian Crecente for his Substack, Avi shared this very brief confirmation that the movie is actually moving forward:
“We’re working on the script some more, but I can’t talk about it yet. I think everyone’s going to be really excited and surprised.”
Brian asked Avi if he expects this movie to be the greatest video game adaptation he will make in his career. His reply was pragmatic and sobering on the way these things go:
“I never thought about it like that. These are just movies I want to make as good as possible, you know? I think getting Metal Gear right will obviously be amazing because I think it’s a lot more meditative than some of the other adaptations.
“Personally, I want it to be terrific.”
Of course, you can’t fault Brian for his enthusiasm. Coming off of the heels of the Super Mario Bros. Movie, the HBO The Last Of Us show and the Amazon Fallout show, video game adaptations to movies and shows are hot right now, and more are on the way. After years in preproduction the Borderlands movie has finally moved forward and is set to release in about one month as of writing this.
In a way, it’s also a miracle that the Metal Gear Solid movie has survived this long at all, and that will be a fascinating making of documentary/and or book when we get that. But that’s not what matters now for the project.
What matters is that Avi’s production company and Konami manage to pull everything off exactly right, not with the objective of 100 % fidelity to the source material, but to be able to bring over what made the franchise appealing to gamers, and share that to the greater public.
