"I'm aiming for a more arthouse approach."
Hideo Kojima says the upcoming Death Stranding movie will be very different to other big-screen adaptations of videogames. In a wide-ranging interview with IGN, the acclaimed game developer discussed cinema’s difficult relationship with video games, and how that influenced his thinking about the planned adaptation of Death Stranding.
“The failure of film adaptation 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,” Kojima says. “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.”
The Death Stranding movie is being produced as a joint collaboration between Kojima Productions and Alex Lebovici, executive producer of the recent horror film Barbarian. Kojima’s decision to work with Lebovici was based upon a shared “vision” the two creators had for the film. “My intention from the start was never to make a blockbuster film,” Kojima says. “I’m aiming for a more arthouse approach, and the only person who offered to make a film like that was Alex Lebovici.”
Alongside the big Death Stranding movie project, Kojima also reveals that he was working on a short film that got “shelved” as a consequence of the pandemic. “It was a screenplay I wrote that we planned to put out as a video. I had been thinking of making this as a short film as a first dip into Hollywood, and the script still exists, but we don’t intend on making it anymore, at least not right now.”
As well as his various movie projects, Kojima also discusses his ongoing work in video games. He reveals how Death Stranding 2 was completely rewritten after the pandemic, and also talks about his cloud project with Microsoft, news of which surfaced in June this year.
“The project we’re working on with Microsoft is one I have been thinking about for five or six years already,” Kojima says. “The project required infrastructure that was never needed before, so I discussed it with lots of different big companies and gave presentations, but they really seemed to think that I was mad.” Kojima says it was Microsoft who “showed the way” and that they’re now working together on the project “including the technology front”.
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