‘Death Stranding’ movie won’t be directed by creator Hideo Kojima
Hideo Kojima has confirmed he won’t be directing the upcoming Death Stranding movie adaptation.
In 2023, Kojima announced that he was teaming up with A24 to turn his hit game Death Stranding into a movie. The original Death Stranding was released in 2019 and follows courier Sam Porter Bridges as he delivers essential supplies and connects surviving human settlements after a devastating event caused destructive creatures to appear across North America.
According to a press release though, the film will dive into the mysteries surrounding the apocalypse known as Death Stranding, and explore the “nightmarish creatures” that were born into a “world on the brink of collapse”, rather than copying the narrative beats of the game. It’s due to launch at some point in 2027.
In a new interview with Variety, Kojima has now confirmed he won’t be directing the film. I think I will help produce it. I need to kind of guide the project but I can’t direct it myself, schedule-wise,” he said.
“I made Death Stranding as a game, so in order to turn it into a movie, it’ll be something totally different. But it’s my baby, so I would like to overlook the project. I’m teaming up with A24 and Michael Sarnoski, so he will be writing and directing. I’ll let them work on it without too much of my input, because that might get in their way. I don’t want to go in and ask them to make a bunch of changes; that’s not cool. I have to trust these people, and I trust A24 and Michael.”
In regards to his busy schedule, Kojima is currently gearing up to launch Death Stranding 2: On The Beach, which is set for release next week. He’s also got plans for a game with celebrated horror director Jordan Peele and has announced action-espionage title Physint, but that won’t be released until at least 2030. There’s also an anime project set in the world of Death Stranding in development.
“When it comes to adapting games into visual media, there are works like The Last Of Us, which stays true to the original storyline, and films like The Super Mario Bros Movie which are more of a service to fans of the game,” Kojima explained recently.
“While these works have their own merits, as a film enthusiast, I want to pursue the expressive potential of cinema. I aim to create a Death Stranding that can only be realised through film, one that could win awards at festivals like the Cannes Film Festival or the Venice Film Festival.”
Thanks to a plot device introduced in Death Stranding 2, Kojima has said he could make “countless” sequels but would rather someone else take over the franchise. At the start of 2025, he admitted that he didn’t know how much longer he’d be making games for.
In other news, a new Roblox gardening mini-game has taken the internet by storm, with more than 16million people playing Grow A Garden together last weekend.
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Ali Shutler
NME
