With “John Wick” firmly in the rearview mirror, filmmaker Chad Stahelski is looking forwards and confirms to Comic Book Movie he’s currently in ‘heavy development’ on his film adaptation of the PlayStation 4’s fastest-selling first-party video game “Ghost of Tsushima”.
Heavily inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s works, the highly acclaimed title is set on Tsushima Island off the Japanese coast in the 13th century. The story begins as the fearsome Mongol Empire invades the island, wreaking havoc.
As one of the last surviving samurai, Jin Sakai rises from the ashes to fight back – but to do so, he must let go of the ways of the more honorable ways of the samurai and embrace becoming the ‘Ghost’.
Talking about the project, he says it’s not just the famed visual of the game but its core story that has attracted him to the project:
“I love the property, like, look, the game story of Jin Sakai, and it being what I would say is, quote, the most anti-samurai samurai movie out there.
Because of the storylines, the thematics in it, and the journey that Jin Sakai goes through from his transition to, or his choices of, who to become and what the people need him to become and what he’s honor bound [to do]… is so interesting to me, like the story is definitely, the characters in the story are definitely something I don’t want to lose in any way.
It’s just the visuals I want to keep. It’s just how do I pack that much information into a feature that can go on to other features or a TV project or platform… We know we have great material.
It’s how to make it palpable in any platform, you know, how do we make a great two, two and a half hour movie out of this? Make it satisfying and leave it open to expand further from there, like that’s the real challenge is how to take so much ‘great’ and get it down to a watchable level.”
The project is in the works at PlayStation Productions and Stahelski’s 87Eleven Entertainment production company and is believed to be a Japanese language film with an all-Japanese cast and a Hollywood-style budget. At last report, award-winning writer and director Takashi Doscher (“Only,” “Still”) was penning the script.
