Hideo Kojima is making a Death Stranding movie

We are currently living in a golden age of video game adaptation, or at least we’re about to enter one. The Last of Us, Fallout, God of War, even Twisted of Metal…all of them are getting the small screen treatment, and unlike the Super Mario Bros. movie back in 1993, where Dennis Hopper played King Koopa, these are actually getting taken seriously.

I dunno, video game movies were considered laughing stocks for so long that it’s odd to see studios devote so many resources to them. And there’s more to come. The other day, Variety announced that Hideo Kojima, the video game auteur behind the Metal Gear Solid series, is producing a big screen version of his 2019 game Death Stranding through Hideo Kojima Productions, in partnership with Alex Lebovici’s Hammerstone Studios. Sony, which produced Death Stranding, doesn’t appear to be involved.

Death Stranding is…hard to describe. It’s a sci-fi game set in a post-apocalyptic version of the United States that’s been destroyed by “time rain.” Also, dead bodies can become nuclear weapons. You play as Sam Bridges, a courier who travels the landscape repairing a communication network, harried all the while by spectral beings you can fend off by lobbing grenades filled with your own pee. Also you carry around a baby in a jar with you, because I think it helps you detect those spectral things?

Most of this, by the way, is played completely straight, which is a hallmark of Kojima’s. His games have always focused very heavily on story, and the stories usually juxtapose the incredibly self-serious with the ludicrously goofy.

Will Norman Reedus return for the Death Stranding movie?

Kojima also has a thing for celebrities. In Death Stranding, the main character is both played by and modeled after The Walking Dead star Norman Reedus. There are cameos from Conan O’Brien, Nicolas Winding Refn, Guillermo Del Toro, Edgar Wright, and horror manga legend Junji Ito, among others. It’s unclear if any of those people will appear in the movie.

Kojima has also been trying to make a movie out of his Metal Gear Solid series for years, and frankly I’m shocked that Death Stranding beat it to the punch considering how much weirder it is.

There’s no release date for the Death Stranding movie as of yet. Brave new world, people.

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