A week ago, Hideo Kojima announced with great fanfare the film of Death Stranding, a franchise that debuted in video games during 2019. Given the enormous ambition that the Japanese creative usually has in all his projects, most of us believed that the feature film would follow the same path. However, we were very wrong. The reality is that we are facing a film with moderate aspirations.
Now those responsible have come out to calm the expectations of the fans, since some were already viewing a film with a budget of blockbusters. In fact, much of the project is being financed by Hammerstone Studios, which is not a company with unlimited resources like the Hollywood giants.
Hideo Kojima, who will participate as an executive producer, told IGN what the movie of Death Stranding It’s never been meant to be too successful.
“I’ve been on video calls with a lot of people in Hollywood every week for the past year, and not just for Death Stranding. I got a lot of offers, but my intention from the beginning was never to make a blockbuster movie. Alex Lebovici [también productor]from Hammerstone Studios, shared my views on it,” Kojima said.
The Japanese was so clear about his objective that he had the luxury of turn down film companies with much larger budgets. The reason is very simple: it is about betting on art, not on economic collection.
“There were a lot of pitches to make a large-scale movie with famous actors and flashy explosions, but… what good would explosions do in Death Stranding? Making money is also not something I focus on at all. My goal is a more artistic approach. , and the only person who offered to do a movie like that was Alex Lebovici, which makes me think he’s a pretty unusual guy.”
Kojima is quite right. Nowadays, it is difficult for a production company, outside of the independent sector, to decide to invest in a project whose aspirations at the box office are contained. Even more so if we talk about the adaptation of a video game.
The movie of Death Stranding intends to succeed in the artistic
Can we already rule out the presence of actors like Norman Reedus, Léa Seydoux and Mads Mikkelsen in the film of Death Stranding? Everything indicates that they will bet on lesser known faces. And not only because of the budget issue, but also because Hideo Kojima does not want to replicate the events of the video game. He mentions it himself:
“The failure of video game movie adaptations a while ago has led to a lot of movies that are geared towards gamers, right? That’s why they have the same look as the game. I don’t want the Death Stranding movie to be So instead, I have the focus of changing and evolving the world of Death Stranding in a way that suits the movie well.
Kojima concluded the talk with a few words that, perhaps, should be considered by all those companies that intend to adapt video games to the big screen. “I did Death Stranding like a game, and games are games. There is no need to turn them into movies. So, in a way, the movie Death Stranding is taking a direction that no one has tried before with a film adaptation of a game.”
We’ll see if the director of Kojima Productos also achieves all his objectives with the film Death Stranding. The bad news is that we will have to wait a few years to enjoy it.