Players have known Hideo Kojima for years as the guiding creative force behind Konami’s Metal Gear games and more recently Death Stranding. He’s built up a lot of goodwill and his profile’s gotten bigger and bigger, and now it seems like he’s ready to cash it all in so Kojima Productions has free reign to do whatever it pleases and go beyond games.
In a recent Variety interview, Kojima talked about his future career plans, and revealed some interesting details. There’s three phases to what he wants to achieve: phase one was to establish Death Stranding as a big property, which did happen. The 2019 game was a critical and commercial success, and currently has a sequel in production due for 2025. Currently, he’s in phase two, which involves expanding his property “in all sorts of directions,” namely other media like anime and films. We already know Death Stranding has a movie in the works over at A24, but that’s not the only thing in the works: “several” adaptation projects for the game are being made, he said. The film is just taking center stage at the moment because he’s got a different story in mind for it that he was natrually cryptic about.
What Kojima did reveal about the Death Stranding movie is that he won’t be directing it, and neither will Jordan Peele, his collaborator on Xbox’s star-studded, mysterious project dubbed OD. Peele’s currently busy doing his own thing, but Kojima noted he’s got several other Hollywood friends who may be up to the task: Guillermo del Toro, Nicolas Winding Refn, and George Miller were all name dropped, and he told Variety they “always talk about doing something together.” (del Toro and Refn were featured in the first game, while Miller’s likeness is used for a character in Death Stranding 2: On the Beach.)
And phase three? Kojima wants to work with “talented people from around the world” to create something brand new and digitally-focused. “It could be a movie, a game, or something else entirely,” he said to Variety. He considers the Death movie and his upcoming espionage game Physint as gateways into what the third part of his master plan will look like. He’s already said he’s making connections in film and non-game industries to make this a reality, which might also involve another movie adaptation. Either way, he says the assets for this endeavor will be digital and in theory could be used whichever track he chooses.
The only thing that’s stopping him is, frankly, time. Between the three games, the Death Stranding movie and other projects, the 61-year-old designer said he just wants “to be able to do everything that I want to do in my remaining lifetime without wasting time.” And beyond that, he feels he owes it in some way to the people who’ve contacted him to tell him how much his work resonated with them. Those moments “make me want to spend the rest of my life making things for people like that,” he said. “I’m not a politician or anyone in a position to make any changes, but I want to support people with my work. Anything that I can do for those people, I want to do it.”
Variety’s full interview with Hideo Kojima can be read here.
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