There’s been rumors of a Metal Gear Solid movie since… well, ever since Metal Gear Solid was originally released on the PS1. Today Konami finally announced that a real, live action Metal Gear Solid movie is in the works.
It’s Metal Gear’s 25th anniversary, and Konami held a huge event in Tokyo today to celebrate the momentous occasion. In addition to Hideo Kojima, the series’ creator, lots of other big name Japanese developers came out to show their love for Metal Gear: Grasshopper Manufacture’s Goichi Suda was spotted among the crowd, as was Platinum Games’ Atsushi Inaba (director of RE2, the original Devil May Cry, Bayonetta,) and ex-Sony director Fumito Ueda (Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, The Last Guardian).
After showing a brief retrospective on the older games in the series and talking about the impact that Metal Gear has had on the games, Hideo Kojima had a special guest join him on stage: Big shot Hollywood movie producer Avi Arad, the man behind hits such as… the 1993 Double Dragon movie. But don’t get scared yet! He was also the producer on some of the recent Marvel movies, such as Iron Man. Arad seems to have a vested interest in trying to adapt games into movies; he’s also attached to produce movie adaptations of Mass Effect and Uncharted (though it’s worth noting that both of those movies have stalled in pre-production.)
Avi Arad assured the crowd that the Hollywood produced Metal Gear films would stay true to the themes and story of Kojima’s original work. “”We will take our time and tell the story with all the nuances, ideology, cautionary tales needed.”
The films that Arad has produced in the past certainly have a…. mixed reputation, but this is Metal Gear we’re talking about: Hideo Kojima is infamous for micromanaging every entry in his on-going opus, and hopefully the Hollywood studios are letting him inject his infamous perfectionism into this project.
The cast and crew for the movie haven’t been announced yet; Arad and Kojima encouraged fans to speak up about which actors and directors they think would be a good fit for the series. The movie is being developed by Columbia Pictures, a division of Sony.
More details as it develops. Also: inb4 “Metal Gear was already a movie, lol DERP.”
