Filmmaker Michael Sarnoski says his upcoming film adaptation of legendary game creator Hideo Kojima’s “Death Stranding” franchise won’t be as gory or dark as the just-released “The Death of Robin Hood”.
The project is described as a standalone story separate from the games but set in the same world. Kojima has previously said the aim is to “capture the soul of the game, the themes of the game, but tell a story that you haven’t seen in that world, and explore characters that you haven’t seen before, and find all of that scope.”
Earlier this week, 31-year-old “Pig” filmmaker Sarnoski told Variety he recently turned in a second draft of the script and hopes to shoot the picture in Iceland and Northern Ireland next year.
Speaking with GamesRadar, he explained how the action featured in the game adaptation differs considerably from his Hugh Jackman-led bloody period piece, which has garnered attention for its brutality:
“I wouldn’t say the script is very violent. There’s definitely a lot of, like, action and excitement to it. There’s some violence to it. I mean, Death Stranding is a brutal world…and it’s a world also where it feels like death is just around the corner.
So there needs to be that sort of visceral sense of, ‘oh, this could be it.’ It’s [a] sort of bleak and barren post-apocalyptic environment. So there is violence and action to it, but the role of violence is very different from this one. [The Death of Robin Hood] is a movie that kind of questions violence.
In Death Stranding, the sort of violence and action is about exploration and about understanding the world more deeply. So there will be some, but you’re not gonna see a lot of jaws getting ripped off in Death Stranding.”
Both the games and film of “Death Stranding” unfold in a world after a cataclysmic event has caused destructive creatures to begin roaming the Earth. The game follows a courier tasked with delivering supplies to isolated colonies and reconnecting them via a wireless communications network.
The games boasted an all-star cast including Mads Mikkelsen, Léa Seydoux, Margaret Qualley, Elle Fanning, Troy Baker, Luca Marinelli, Tommie Earl Jenkins, and Lindsay Wagner along with filmmakers like George Miller, Faith Akin, Guillermo del Toro and Nicolas Winding Refn in supporting roles.
