The video game adaptation industry is slowly growing into something special, but it’s also something that is on the edge of a cliff. After all, when you think about it, there have been more successful TV and movie adaptations of video games in recent years than ever before. However, as 2024 has proven, some people still aren’t “getting the memo” and turning out bad products that we’ll forever laugh at. Plus, some projects have been announced that we have no idea how they’ll turn out. Case in point, the Death Stranding movie that Hideo Kojima is making with A24.
That’s right, Hideo Kojima himself is working alongside movie powerhouse A24 to develop the game that he first made with his new company after being fired from Konami. What makes this interesting, though, is that while having a chat about the film with Famitsu, he noted that he got multiple offers from other production companies who wanted to transform the film and the game’s story into more of a “blockbuster.” That’s something he wasn’t a fan of:
“I have no intention of directing it myself, so I am involved with the producer in terms of the plot, etc. The other film companies that had approached me had mostly offered to make it with a big budget and lots of explosions’, but I didn’t want that. I want to make a slightly different kind of film with A24.”
He even joked about how he is “trying to keep the budget down” so that he can help make the version of the film he wants. In other words, he’s trying to do it “Kojima-style.”
The irony here is many fold. First off, while the game is a sci-fi story, so it will need SOME budget to help deliver the visuals and scenes that it was known for in the trailers and beyond, its story is much more lowkey. It’s about Sam Bridges, who is trying to reconnect humanity after an event separated them all. That’s why Death Stranding got so many jokes about it being a “delivery simulator,” even though it technically was more complex than that.
Second, while A24 has made some “big budget” films in the past, it has also been phenomenal at doing big things with small budgets and getting huge payoffs as a result. Let’s not forget that they made a certain multiversal movie that put Marvel to shame AND won Best Picture at the Oscars and beyond.
So, if this is the direction that Kojima wants to go? Let him cook.
