Death Stranding movie will not adapt the games but tell an original story, director confirms

Now, it has been confirmed that the film will take the series in a new direction, following confirmation at the recent Beyond the Strand livestream, celebrating the 10th anniversary of Kojima Productions.

The project's director, Michael Sarnoski (A Quiet Place: Day One, Pig), joined Hideo Kojima on stage to discuss the project, revealing new details about the film.

"I think, with this project, we really want to capture the soul of the game, capture the themes of the game," he explained, "but tell a story you haven't seen in that world and explore characters you haven't seen before, and find all of that scope and all of those incredible real locations, but also find all of those nuanced characters and just do justice to this on a macro and micro scale."

"We're trying to find something, another story that you've never seen in the same universe that is both accessible to people that have never played the games before, but will also give something to people that know the games really well."

Kojima added that one major reason behind this is that due to Death Stranding taking "about 70, 80 hours" to complete, they did not want to "slim that down to a two-hour movie".

Whether this means the likes of Sam Porter Bridges and Fragile, and indeed their respective actors Norman Reedus and Léa Seydoux, will not feature in the film remains to be seen.

On being asked to lead the project, Sarnoski recalled: "Initially, when I came onto this project, it was a huge honour. I was terrified by the idea of taking something this big on, especially after [A] Quiet Place, which was a really big endeavour."

"But it was after meeting Kojima-san and talking to A24 that I realised how much freedom they were willing to give me on this project."

While Kojima may not be directing the film, on account of being too busy with upcoming Kojima Productions games OD and Physint, he has confirmed that he wil be "deeply involved" in production of the film, nonetheless.

Alongside talk of the live action adaptation, it was also confirmed that an animated adaptation is in the works, Death Stranding Mosquito, which will tell its own original story in the world of Death Stranding.

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