Way back in 1998, playing legendary game designer Hideo Kojima’s soon to become classic video game, Metal Gear Solid, for the very first time, I remember turning to a friend of mine as soon as the opening credits started appearing on-screen and loudly exclaiming “Cowabunga, dude! This game is like, totally rad. It’s lank kiff how it looks and feels just like a movie, ya dig?”.
Okay, so my memory of 90’s lingo and what I actually said may be a bit hazy, but there’s no getting rid of the memory of just how utterly cinematic that game was. This unprecedented movie-ness immediately had people asking for a feature film adaptation. 16 Years later, and it’s finally happening.
Deadline is reporting that Sony Pictures, the studio who currently owns the video games’ rights are in talks with Jordan Vogt-Roberts to direct a feature film adaptation of the Konami video game. At this point, I’m sure a bunch of you are asking “Who?”
Vogt-Roberts is definitely not a household name, but he made a splash on the film festival scene last year with his debut directorial effort, the coming of age dramedy The Kings of Summer. Yes, a guy only known for a small, charming, off-beat movie about three young boys running away from home to live in the forest, is going to make a big budget sci-fi blockbuster with a complex, far out story about super-soldier clones, giant mechs, futuristic armies and a wacky cast of characters led by a mullet-wearing badass with a predilection for hiding in cardboard boxes. Right.
Michael De Luca and Avi Arad will be producing, and between the pair of them, they have some serious Hollywood blockbuster experience and successes, so I’m going to give their judgement the benefit of the doubt for now. Hey, the Russo brothers had pretty much only directed a lame Owen Wilson comedy and some sitcom episodes before Kevin Feige picked them to do Captain America: The Winter Soldier and look how that turned out, so I guess “counting chickens” and all that.
There’s no word though on who will be cast as the franchise’ protagonist, Solid Snake, nor exactly what part of Metal Gear Solid’s admittedly bonkers, decades spanning narrative would be adapted for the film. This last aspect was apparently the biggest reason why it took so long for this project to get off the ground, as the studio and the game’s developers took some time to come to mutual agreement about how to tell this tale.
As for the first bit, casting, I already see lots of fan support for Karl Urban, a pick I could possibly get behind. But we can’t forget that it was Avi Arad who was behind Kiefer Sutherland controversially ousting long-time voice actor David Hayter last year to become the new voice of Solid Snake in the next installment of the franchise. Could that have been the first seed of future plans? I mean, we already know Sutherland can rock a mullet like he was born to it, and has almost exclusively spent the last decade as a badass government agent handy with all sorts of firearms and hi-tech gizmos, so this wouldn’t be too much of a stretch, right?
Last Updated: June 5, 2014
Hammersteyn
June 5, 2014 at 09:57
Karl Urban makes me long for a Judge Dredd sequel. Kiefer wasn’t bad at all in Pompeii. So why not give him a shot. I mean Kevin Costner was pretty bad ass in 3 days to kill so with the right choreography you can make anyone look cool.