There’s now two Death Stranding film adaptations in the works. The first is the A24 movie with Michael Sarnoski directing, and the second is a newly announced animated film being made by animation studio Line Mileage in collaboration with Kojima Productions, with Raised by Wolves creator Aaron Guzikowski signed on to write the script.
Deadline reports that the film will be a more mature-focused animated feature, and will center a new story in the Death Stranding universe that has not been explored in the games.
“I love the world of Death Stranding,” Guzikowski said in a statement to Deadline. “It’s so creatively freeing, so beautifully dark and yet hopeful; I’m so excited and honored that Hideo Kojima, whose work I’ve long admired, has invited me to dwell within his creation, to birth new stories into this fertile, mind-bending universe. Drawing and animation have always been near and dear to my heart, so to finally get to play in this space is a dream come true.”
Line Mileage’s chief creative officer, Daniel Dominguez added “As an avid gamer I can say, unequivocally, Death Stranding is the most cinematic, thought-provoking video game I have ever played. Playing it gave me the same emotional rush, visceral punch, and intellectual pleasure I had the first time I watched Blade Runner, or Ghost in the Shell. Adapting it into a form it so naturally evokes is an honor. And for Aaron Guzikowski to lend his talents, whose authorial mind and creative energy humble me…needless to say, this project is a dream come true.”
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is due a week from this current time of writing, and now with two movie adaptations in the works, it’s clear we’ll be hearing about this series for a long time to come. Whether that’s in a good or bad way remains to be seen with how the next game and these subsequent adaptations do.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, co-composer for Death Stranding 2, Woodkid, revealed that Hideo Kojima’s reactions to players being extremely positive about how the game was shaping up in early playtests were to change it and make it more polarizing. Kojima wasn’t satisfied with positive responses across the board, he wanted to see more people react differently than just delivering full praise.
It’s still unclear how deeply involved Kojima will be in both the A24 live-action adaptation and Line Mileage’s animated adaptation, but the litmus test for both, as to how well they work as adaptations of a Hideo Kojima game, will undoubtedly be how differently people react to the narrative in each film.
