As a slightly ill-fitting adolescent who’d pass time in class writing down a complete chronology of the Metal Gear narrative, Hideo Kojima’s ascendance to full-blown mainstream continually suggests an alternate, better pop culture. Not least of all when 2019’s Death Stranding was an oddly shaped masterpiece––not exactly non-narrative, but the 33 hours I took to beat it offered perhaps equivalent to one feature’s story. While awaiting more word on the second game, this strange universe has begun growing.
A24 and Kojima Productions have announced they’ll be partnering on a film adaptation with unique goals: one that will “delve into the mysteries surrounding the apocalyptic event called the ‘Death Stranding,’ which blurred the lines between life and death, and brought forth nightmarish creatures into a world on the brink of collapse.” Kojima, for his own part, makes clear the intent to create a “Death Stranding universe that has never been seen before, achievable only through the medium of film.”
Your guess is as good as mine, though the bar is set quite high when reshaping a game wherein Léa Seydoux gives the greatest motion-capture performance I’ve ever seen, or one that wrung emotional weight from an hour-or-so of carrying Margaret Qualley’s unconscious body across miles of desolate terrain. Come to think of it: this would be a perfect return to narrative filmmaking for Nicolas Winding Refn, Death Stranding‘s own Heartman. (Or allow Bertrand Bonello a nice, thematically apt follow-up to The Beast.) But I’m getting ahead of myself and should reserve anticipation––likely we’re years out.