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: 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.

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.

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

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

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.

“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”.

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