Hideo Kojima is a renowned lover of cinema, and understandably, very passionate about his Death Stranding series. Therefore, when it was announced last December that the game would be getting the film adaptation treatment, many of us assumed Kojima would jump at the chance to direct. However, he has now confirmed that this won't be the case.
Over on Twitter, Kojima has revealed some of the roles he will have during Death Stranding's film production, but has made it clear these won't extend to directorial work. Instead, the game designer says that he'll take a more supervisory role, overseeing the plot, casting, and the overall "look" of the film.
Kojima just dropped the news on Twitter, assuring fans that he's "deeply involved" in many aspects of the film, just "not in charge of directing". He doesn't say who is on directorial duties - or if anyone has even been selected yet. Given Kojima's love of his relatively young series, we can expect him o have a say in who does get the gig at least, we just now know it won't be him making his feature film debut.
It's not clear why Kojima opted to not direct the film, given his well-documented love of cinema. But of course, no matter how cinematic his games are, directing a film will differ greatly from his usual line of work. With that in mind, he may use the Death Stranding film as an opportunity to learn the craft. Because there's no way he never directs a film before he retires.
Of course, there's also the possibility that he's just way too busy to direct an entire movie. We already know that he's working on Death Stranding 2 which, if it ups the ante on the last game, will be a huge, time-intensive undertaking.
Then, there's the unannounced game that we also know Kojima Productions is working on, rumoured to be called Overdose. Some footage from this long-rumoured game even leaked last year, so it definitely seems that the studio will have its hands full on the game development side of things, leaving Kojima less time to pursue his Hollywood dreams. That being said, he gets to hang around a bunch of famous actors whenever he's making a game, so those recording booths must feel a lot like Hollywood when the cast is in to do their lines.