While the strange visuals of “Death Stranding” are definitely a good fit for A24, whose highest-grossing movie to date was the delightfully weird “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” the adaptation will need the right director to bring it to life.
The obvious name that comes to mind is Guillermo del Toro, who co-directed the 2014 horror game “P.T.” with Kojima. If you solved the puzzle at the heart of “P.T.” it unlocked a teaser trailer for “Silent Hills”: a new game in the “Silent Hill” franchise that would be a collaboration between Kojima and del Toro, and star Norman Reedus. Despite the extreme fan hype, game publisher Konami canceled “Silent Hills” and attempted to eradicate “P.T.” from existence. It has survived only through emulators and PlayStation consoles that downloaded the game before it was deleted.
This was one of the biggest controversies in video game history, so there’s a lot of fan appetite to see del Toro and Kojima team up again. But in a statement accompanying the announcement, Kojima noted that, “The intention is that our audience will not only be fans of the games, but our film will be for anyone who loves cinema.” He also revealed that the film won’t be a “direct translation” of the games: “We are creating a ‘Death Stranding’ universe that has never been seen before, achievable only through the medium of film, it will be born.”
Given that del Toro’s movie to-do list is already about eight miles high, A24 and Kojima Productions will probably need to find another director for “Death Stranding.” Then again, the movie’s development has only just started — perhaps by the time it’s ready to be put to film, del Toro will have vanquished his to-do list.