Summary

• The Metal Gear Solid movie has faced multiple setbacks and is unlikely to happen due to struggles with finding the right story.
• A24's announcement of a Death Stranding movie, in partnership with Kojima Productions, further decreases the chances of the Metal Gear Solid adaptation taking place.
• Compared to Metal Gear Solid, Death Stranding is easier to adapt into a film due to its more accessible story.

For years, Oscar Isaac's Metal Gear Solid: The Movie, and, in 2018, Isaac expressed interest in playing protagonist Solid Snake. In 2020, Oscar Isaac was officially cast in the project, but little headway has been made on the film. Reportedly, the film team has been struggling to find the right story to tell — and one that lives up to Kojima's standards.

Released in 1998 by publisher Konami, Metal Gear Solid is a stealth action game in which gamers play as the soldier Solid Snake. Tasked with infiltrating a nuclear weapons facility and neutralizing a terrorist threat, Snake finds himself face-to-face with unexpected threats and super-powered enemies. While MGS technically came after two Metal Gear games, it quickly became the definitive story in the franchise's library. Metal Gear Solid has since spawned several sequels, prequels, and spinoffs, all of which are generally lauded for their storytelling — no matter how complicated the Metal Gear lore and timeline become. That said, fans have been eagerly awaiting the game's cinematic debut.

Death Stranding's Movie Makes Oscar Isaac's Metal Gear Solid Even Less Likely

On December 14, 2023, film production and distribution company A24 made a huge announcement that might just be the final nail in the Metal Gear Solid movie's cardboard-box coffin. In the coming months, A24 will be bringing a live-action feature film adaptation of Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding to life. In fact, the film powerhouse has even partnered with Kojima Productions — the outfit Metal Gear Solid's visionary created after leaving Konami in 2015. Shortly after the completion of Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, Kojima and Konami ended their fruitful three-decade partnership — and not on the best of either.

It was revealed that Kojima would partner with Guillermo del Toro on a new installment in another of Konami's flagship series: Silent Hill. Set to star The Walking Dead's Norman Reedus, Silent Hills was canceled, Kojima's name was quietly removed from Metal Gear materials, and of Kojima and of MGS 5's development team became, essentially, Konami contractors (via Polygon). After leaving Konami, the legendary game designer formed Kojima Productions and released Death Stranding, an acclaimed game that stars Reedus. Given Konami's scorched-earth approach, it seems unlikely that a Kojima-approved Metal Gear Solid film will move forward, especially now that he's adapting Death Stranding with A24.

Why Death Stranding Is Easier To Adapt Than Metal Gear Solid

Of the two properties, there's no denying that Death Stranding is way easier to adapt into a film than Metal Gear Solid, which boasts a notoriously complex narrative. Full of twists and turns, the Metal Gear saga is composed of 17 entries, including 11 mainline games. When Kojima first started writing and guiding the series, he hadn't envisioned its massive scope or planned out every detail. Ahead of Phantom Pain's release, he even warned players of the plot holes that would crop up in the entry. "Sometimes I need to accept these inconsistencies in order to be able to achieve what I want for the story," Kojima told GameSpot.

While Kojima says he never sets out to tell complicated stories, Metal Gear Solid still trips people up. At the very least, its dense lore, numerous twists, similarly named characters, and ever-growing timeline can feel inaccessible to newcomers. Death Stranding, which is set in an apocalyptic United States, is populated by invisible, afterlife-linked creatures and centers on courier Sam Porter Bridges (Reedus). By nature, the open-world game isn't as densely packed with plot as Metal Gear Solid — though its narrative is compelling. That said, Death Stranding is a much more accessible story with a lot of room to grow, making it a better fit for film.

Will The Metal Gear Solid Movie Ever Happen?

The Metal Gear Solid movie was announced nearly a decade ago. It's also approaching four years since Oscar Isaac was cast as the film's lead. When it comes to the project, nothing of any real substance has been revealed. In 2022, Isaac said the Metal Gear Solid team is "still looking for the story" (via Oscar Isaac's many movies, Vogt-Roberts' Gundam film, A24 and Kojima's newly announced Death Stranding movie, and a near-decade of pre-production hell, it seems incredibly unlikely that this Metal Gear Solid movie adaptation will still happen at all.

Sources: Polygon, GameSpot, IGN