In a world where cinematic adaptations of video games are still having a tough time, the announcement that Hideo Kojima’s ambitious, bizarre 2019 game Death Stranding will be turned into a movie from Barbarian executive producer Alex Lebovici is baffling. Unless you think audiences are ready for a post-apocalyptic film about a man who throws grenades made of his bodily fluids at ghosts. I, personally, have some doubts.
However, that’s just the proverbial tip of the iceberg of how resolutely, punishingly weird Death Stranding is. If you really want to know how bananas it is in its entirety, I suggest you read our sister site Kotaku’s review of the game. To try to put it more briefly, Sam Bridges (performed by Norman Reedus) is a delivery person in a post-apocalyptic America where ghosts are very real and very dangerous. In order to see these ghosts as he travels, he carries around a baby in a jar. Most of the game is just long, slow hikes from outpost to outpost, punctured by Kojima’s trademark dense storytelling and overwrought lunacy.
To be fair, Death Stranding did sell something like five million copies, and Kojima has just announced a sequel game is in production, which makes an adept to adapt the game into a movie more understandable. Plus, Death Stranding was cinematic as hell, not just in its visuals but its cast, which also included Mads Mikkelsen, Léa Seydoux, and Guillermo del Toro. Whether Reedus or any of these other actors will return for the movie is unknown.
[Via Deadline]
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