Tsu­taya are show­ing off a list of Hideo Kojima’s 15 favorite movies that have inspired the game fran­chise. Note the inter­est­ing omis­sion of “Escape from New York”.

The Guns of Navarone
The Great Escape
Goldfin­ger
2001: A Space Odyssey
Planet of the Apes (orig­i­nal)
The Deer Hunter
Dawn of the Dead
Full Metal Jacket
Preda­tor
Die Hard
Heat
Black Hawk Down
Chil­dren of Men
Bourne Series
Casino Royale (with Daniel Craig)

Can we expect a movie adap­ta­tion in the same vein as these choices?

Hat tip to /Film

Col­lider had the chance to meet with Michael De Luca (writer of Judge Dredd, pro­ducer on Blade II, Zathura, Ghost Rider) at ShoW­est and dis­cuss, amongst other things, the Metal Gear movie adap­ta­tion. I’ve picked out the rel­e­vant MGS related con­tent from the inter­view for you. De Luca dis­cusses the aim of the adap­ta­tion and achiev­ing an inde­pen­dent cin­e­matic aura whilst stay­ing true to the fran­chise, he also clar­i­fies his pre­vi­ous com­ment on Kurt Wim­mer — he is not direct­ing, he isn’t even hired yet — he is cur­rently involved in the adap­ta­tion writ­ing process. Though this doesn’t rule him out for a direct­ing role in the future.

Col­lider: So this is the ques­tion that every fan…I’m ask­ing this for every fan…what are you going to do to finally make a kick-ass video game movie?

Mike De Luca: I mean, hope­fully not screw it up.  For me adapt­ing a video game is just like adapt­ing a book or a play or any other…whenever you’re adapt­ing from another medium for film you try to take into account what you need to do to make it a movie. 

With books it’s how you com­pen­sate for not being inside a character’s head and with video games I think what you have to com­pen­sate for is the loss of inter­ac­tiv­ity, you know.  What makes video games fun is that you get to be the char­ac­ter and you’re sit­ting there rul­ing the uni­verse and it’s a really first per­son inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence.  When you’re in your the­atre seat, you’re stuck with these sub­jec­tive ver­sions of the story and the game from a direc­tor or the writer’s point of view.  You can’t inter­act with what’s going on so what­ever turns you on about the game, you’re imme­di­ately disadvantaged […]

So I think the bar is higher and I think in the past, peo­ple haven’t real­ized that they set the bar low for video game movies think­ing that oh, there’s a built in audi­ence and we don’t need to go crazy with this movie. […] [In Metal Gear Solid] the Cain and Able story between Solid Snake and Liq­uid Snake and their rela­tion­ship with their father and the sto­ry­line of Metal Gear Solid 4 has the mak­ings….there’s so much story in Metal Gear as opposed to other video games that I think it’s going to be a chal­lenge but it’s an upscale prob­lem to have so much the­matic sub­texts and story mate­r­ial to draw from, so I think we have a leg up already. It’s such a rich uni­verse and Kojima is like George Lucas in terms of cre­at­ing this uni­verse so what it says about war by proxy in this kind of future where war has been out­sourced to pri­vate com­pa­nies I think can be almost very top­i­cal and also kind of satir­i­cal in like a “Robo­cop” kind of way, so I think if we can get a script that hon­ors the sto­ry­line of all 4 games, but that also has a cin­e­matic aes­thetic you know the kind of aes­thetic Ver­ho­even brought to “Robo­cop” or the kind of aes­thetic the Wachowski’s brought to “The Matrix”.  If there’s a cin­e­matic iden­tity to the piece that exists on its own, it doesn’t con­flict with the DNA of the game, you know that’s our goal is to pull off those 2 things.  Not mess with the DNA of the game but pro­vide a movie that is an adap­ta­tion but that has it’s own cin­e­matic iden­tity so even if you don’t play the game you know, you’ll come out of that movie feel­ing like you did at the end of “The Matrix” or the end of “Robo­cop”.  That’s our goal anyway.

Col­lider: I guess that being said, have you thought […] $100 mil­lion movie—this is a sum­mer block­buster or this is going to be one of these mid-range kind of things?

Mike De Luca: No, they know it’s big.  I mean, we don’t want it to be crazy big but they know it’s big on the big­ger side of things.

[…] This writer Kurt Wim­mer is one of the peo­ple we’re look­ing at to talk to about pitch­ing on it.
[…] Kurt is like one of many peo­ple we’re talk­ing to about pitch­ing us back a take on adapt­ing the fran­chise. He hasn’t been hired or anything.

At the Planet Hol­ly­wood Casino in Las Vegas, as part of the pro­mo­tion for Sony’s “21”, Com­ing Soon caught up with Michael De Luca (writer of Judge Dredd, pro­ducer on Blade II, Zathura, Ghost Rider). In speak­ing with him, he revealed that now the writer’s strikes have ended, the devel­op­ment of the Metal Gear Solid movie has swung back into action.

De Luca also men­tioned an upcom­ing meet­ing with Kurt Wim­mer, direc­tor and writer of Equi­lib­rium. A num­ber of fans have pre­vi­ously expressed a desire to involve him in the game to movie adap­ta­tion — they may yet get their wish. His involve­ment isn’t yet con­firmed and we can only spec­u­late as to his poten­tial role.

David Hayter will have no defin­ing involve­ment in the live action metal gear solid movie adap­ta­tion. Hayter him­self, the voice of Solid Snake and screenwriter/actor, wrote a treat­ment for the film how­ever Kon­ami and the big play­ers turned it down.

Hayter has not been hired to script or pro­duce the upcom­ing fea­ture, should he have been, the film may have fol­lowed his intended direc­tion, which was, “Metal Gear as the Apoc­a­lypse Now of the dig­i­tal age, with Snake at the cen­ter of a swirling whirlpool of Genomic/military mad­ness.”

A 90% major­ity vote at IGN believe omit­ting Hayter from the pro­ceed­ings is a mis­take.  Hayter has pre­vi­ously been involved with the screen­plays of Brian Signer’s X-men and X2 and he is cer­tainly expe­ri­enced enough to do the job, cou­pled with a plen­ti­ful stash of MGS knowl­edge surely he’d be the per­fect man for the job?

Source: IGN

Here’s a lit­tle tid­bit of news we missed, back in an inter­view in 2006 Hideo Kojima announced that he thought Lord of the Rings star, Viggo Mortensen, would be the per­fect role as Snake.

Hideo Kojima : ‘It’s going to be a Hol­ly­wood film. It won’t be that Ger­man direc­tor [Uwe Boll]. Viggo Mortensen would make a per­fect Snake, but maybe he’s a lit­tle too old. Metal Gear Solid, which was set in Alaska, would make a per­fect set­ting for the movie.’

Source: Jeux France

8 months later, on 8th Feb­ru­ary 2007 Vari­ety reported that Colum­bia Pic­tures, owned by Sony Pic­tures Enter­tain­ment were “bring­ing hit vidgame fran­chise “Metal Gear Solid” to the bigscreen.”

With the announce­ment came the news of Michael De Luca’s inolv­ment as a pro­ducer — pre­vi­ous works have included Amer­i­can His­tory X, Blade II and Mag­no­lia. Video game cre­ator Hideo Kojima will act as exec­u­tive pro­ducer, over­see­ing the project.

Yair Lan­dau, Sony chair, con­firmed it was in the works fol­low­ing his keynote speech Thurs­day at the DICE vidgame con­fab in Las Vegas — to quote, “It’s a very cin­e­matic game, it really lends itself to movie telling. But the ques­tion is, ‘How do you trans­late Snake’s expe­ri­ence into a full arc that con­forms to what audi­ences expect on the large screen?”

Doug Bel­grad, an exec­u­tive involved with final­is­ing the deal (the other being Sam Dick­er­man) states that MGS is “loaded with well-developed, intrigu­ing char­ac­ters and one of the first games to ever use cin­e­matic tools in its sto­ry­telling.” The deal is sup­pos­edly near completion.

As it stands, the IMDB page pens a 2009 release date.

Firstly on April 28th in a pod­cast, then on May 10th 2006 at the last E3 expo Metal Gear Solid cre­ator (amidst rumors), Hideo Kojima, made the announce­ment that a feature-length film adap­ta­tion of the pop­u­lar series was in development:

“I have received many offers to adapt Metal Gear Solid. It has taken a long time, but we have finally set­tled on an arrange­ment. False facts aside, a movie project is under­way. I have final­ized a Class-A con­tract with a party in Hol­ly­wood.” Source.

Dur­ing this time rumors were abound that the atro­cious and piti­ful direc­tor Uwe Boll (Alone in the Dark, Postal) was some­how involved. At the announce­ment these rumors were quashed, Ger­man direc­tor Uwe Boll will not have any­thing to do with the project — “it’s impos­si­ble we’d ever do a movie with him”.

View the orig­i­nal arti­cle
An image ver­sion of this arti­cle, saved for pros­per­ity, can be found here.
Lis­ten to the orig­i­nal pod­cast here. (HIDECHAN! ラジオ　第53回 （06.04.28）)