Does every existing IP need a movie adaptation? The answer is no, of course, but I’m quietly confident in the upcoming live-action version of hit Hideo Kojima franchise, Death Stranding.
Why? Well, let’s start with the concept. In the game, courier Sam must reconnect a broken America after an apocalyptic event merged the worlds of the living and the dead. Add in distributor A24 and the man who directed Pig and The Death of Robin Hood — which is now in UK cinemas after its June US release — and you’ve surely got gold.
However, there’s one immediate snag. While we don’t know much, we do know that the new movie won’t follow the same premise as the existing Death Stranding games.
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In fact, according to director Michael Sarnoski, not only is it a standalone movie, but will be made with a lot of creative freedom — and something about the way he explains this makes me nervous.
‘I need the space to find authorship and find the things that I really believe in’
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“I actually like to make things difficult for myself,” Sarnoski tells me. “I like to do projects where the initial instinct is ‘Oof, that could be a really bad idea.’ Another Robin Hood movie? A prequel to a horror franchise? I like things where it could be easy to miss the mark.”
This in itself is a concerning statement. I prefer it when my movie directors don’t go into an adaptation thinking that things could potentially go horribly wrong. Whatever happened to positive mental attitude?
“I like the challenge,” he continues. “I like finding the humanity in things that otherwise could not work. On Death Stranding, they’re giving me a lot of freedom to tell the story that I want to tell separate from the core video game stories. It’s its own standalone thing. I need the space to find authorship and find the things that I really believe in… I’m really excited about it.”
Playing devil’s advocate here, creative freedom could be a good thing. If fans expect a movie to replicate its original source material exactly, nobody ends up winning. But with so few details to go on, we’ve got to keep our fingers crossed that good decisions are made in the meantime.
But is Sarnoski concerned about appealing to existing fanbases, or is he happy to stick to his guns? “A little bit of both,” he responds. “I feel the pressure, but I have to set that aside and focus on what creatively excites me. I can’t make stuff as a reaction to what I think someone else wants — it has to come from a place of love and fascination.”
Make of that what you will, folks… and watch this space.
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