The world is becoming a topsy-turvy place with no rules. man. You’ve got Colin Trevorrow going from the small indie “Safety Not Guaranteed” to “Jurassic World,” Gareth Edwards making the monstrous leap from the indie “Monsters” to “Godzilla” and Marc Webb quantum shifting from “(500) Days of Summer” to helming Sony’s current “The Amazing Spider-Man” series. Let’s add one more unlikely name to the pack.
Jordan Vogt-Roberts, the filmmaker behind quirky indie teen dramedy “The Kings Of Summer,” is in talks to direct an adaptation of the video game “Metal Gear Solid.” (In related Playlist features, read our 12 Indie Directors Who Jumped To Blockbuster Budgets piece.)
Why Vogt-Roberts for this gig? Well, for one, like all the other filmmakers listed above, being “indie” or “mainstream” is not only an antiquated notion, all of the directors above have fairly eclectic taste and most of them grew up on all kinds of pop culture. There’s also the fact that a director’s gotta eat and studios are definitely eschewing character-based dramas in favor of established brands like video games. And there’s the fact if you follow Vogt-Roberts on Twitter, this is clearly a guy who loves not only “The Godfather” and seminal films from the ‘70s that we all love, but “Star Wars” and other pop cultural touchstones—much like us.
Sony is the studio on this one with ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ producers Avi Arad and Sony’s production president Michael De Luca (“The Social Network“). “Metal Gear Solid” debuted in 1998 from PlayStation, and the action-adventure stealth video game centers on a soldier who infiltrates a nuclear weapons facility to neutralize a terrorist threat from a renegade special forces unit. There are dozens of games in the “Metal Gear” series and “Metal Gear Solid” is considered one of the seminal video games of all time.
Video games adaptations have never really made for good movies, but much like comic-book movies, which were pretty crappy for a long time, it feels like a turning point may be on the horizon. Tom Hardy’s about to star in a version of “Splinter Cell” with director Doug Liman, Michael Fassbender is developing “Assassin’s Creed,” and coming out in spring 2016 is Duncan Jones’ “Warcraft,” an adaptation of the popular game “World of Warcraft.” Gore Verbinski’s “Bioshock” and Neill Blomkamp’s “Halo” may have both fallen apart before they reached the screen, but it feels about as good as a time as any right now for the video game adaptation to finally achieve the high score. [Deadline]
