The single most prevalent complaint leveled against Hideo Kojima's games since the days of Metal Gear Solid 2 is that they're basically just playable movies anyway. 2008's MGS4 still holds the world record for the longest cutscene in gaming, with its ending wrap-up weighing in at a certifiably feature-length 71 minutes.
Despite his dedication to putting the 'video' in 'video game', this hasn't stopped Kojima from taking breaks from hanging out with his favorite movie star of that week to seek proper film adaptations of his stories. Jordan Vogt-Roberts' Metal Gear Solid movie is entering its next year of well-documented development hell, A24 is working on a live-action Death Stranding adaptation, and now a new animated Death Stranding project has been announced ahead of the second game's release. Per VGC:
Aaron Guzikowski, who has served as a writer on both Raised by Wolves and Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners, is attached to the project. The film will reportedly seek to achieve a tone similar to that of Predator: Killer of Killers, a recently released animated project.
"I love the world of Death Stranding, it's so creatively freeing, so beautifully dark and yet hopeful; I'm so excited and honored that Hideo Kojima, whose work I've long admired, has invited me to dwell within his creation, to birth new stories into this fertile, mind-bending universe," said Guzikowski.
A live-action film adaptation of Death Stranding is currently in production at A24.
Somewhat strange mention of fertile universes and birthing stories aside, it seems this will be a look at a different aspect of the deeply weird Death Stranding world, taking us outside of Norman Reedus' withdrawn protagonist Sam for the first time. Killer of Killers is already being called the best thing to come out of the Predator franchise, bar none, so I'm absolutely on board for anything that seeks to capture that energy.
