Death Stranding developer Kojima Productions is opening a TV and film division

Yes, Hideo Kojima is now one step closer to actually making movies

By Sam Barsanti  |  November 22, 2021 | 9:15pm
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Death Stranding developer Kojima Productions is opening a TV and film division
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Death Stranding star Norman Reedus (L) and Hideo Kojima (R) Photo: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC)

Video games created by Hideo Kojima—the guy behind Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding—are sometimes unfairly criticized for being “too much like movies.” Sure, long and typically non-interactive cutscenes are a hallmark of Kojima games, but saying “he should just make a movie!” willfully ignores the parts of games that are actually innovative and do things that could never be done in any other medium. (Death Stranding makes you feel the isolation and frustration of its protagonist by making the player isolated and frustrated! It’s clever!)

Anyway, Hideo Kojima’s making movies now… or at least his video game development studio, Kojima Productions, is launching a new division dedicated to movies, TV, and music. That doesn’t necessarily mean anyone is making a Death Stranding movie, but GamesIndustry.biz says Riley Russell, a former VP of business affairs for PlayStation, is heading up the new branch and will be “expanding the reach and awareness of the properties now under development at Kojima Productions” to make them “even more a part of our popular culture.”

That does sound a bit like “Death Stranding movie,” or at least that people like Russell are now being put in place to explore the possibility of a Death Stranding movie, but it’s hard to predict what this new Kojima Productions division will actually do since that one game is the only thing they’ve actually released.

For those who don’t follow video game industry drama, this Kojima Productions is not the same Kojima Productions that developed the Metal Gear Solid series (or cult-classic demo thing PT). That studio, which was led by the same guy and presumably had a lot of the same staff, was a subsidiary of Japanese publisher Konami whereas the current Kojima Productions is independent. Kojima and Konami split up years ago after the tumultuous development of Metal Gear Solid V, so this new Kojima Productions division has nothing to do with the Metal Gear movie that will probably never happen.

 
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