It’s been several years since Jordan Vogt-Roberts brought us Kong: Skull Island, but the director has two high-profile projects in development right which could even eclipse the big ape. Vogt-Roberts has been working on an adaptation of Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid video-game franchise for a number of years, but the project took a big step forward when Oscar Isaac officially signed on to play Solid Snake late last year. It was also announced earlier this year that he would be helming a live-action Gundam movie based on the anime series for Netflix. While speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Jordan Vogt-Roberts offered updates on both projects.
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“Metal Gear is something I’ve been trying to Sisyphus push up the hill for seven-plus years,” Jordan Vogt-Roberts told EW. “That game and Kojima-san’s world mean the world to me, and that’s something that I’m very proud of what we’re doing. I think it’s very Kojima, punk rock, twisty. And then Gundam, likewise, is the godfather of otaku culture in a lot of ways without exaggeration. It is the grandfather to modern anime and thus most Japanese things that we love. It really is wild what Gundam was doing on television in an animated format in the ’70s and the complexity and the weight of the stories they were telling.“
With Metal Gear Solid, Vogt-Roberts is hoping to “create a new type of action on screen that also is based in the quietness of the stealth, knowing the every step you take as you go further into the belly of the beast, further away from safety.” The director is also well aware that translating a video game to the big screen isn’t as easy as one might assume.
Those aren’t one-to-one translations. So, I think you really need to understand when playing a game what it elicits from you, why it makes you feel certain ways, what the tone that it evokes is.
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Shifting focus to Gundam, Vogt-Roberts said that he’s “pretty full force in the world of Gundam right now” as Brian K. Vaughan is writing the screenplay. He added that he hopes the project will appeal to hardcore Gundam fans as well as those who know nothing of the franchise. “My goal is to for all of the people who might say, ‘I don’t know where to start [with Gundam],’ I want to create this film and give them an access point where you can say, ‘This is where you start. This is your entry point,’” Vogt-Roberts said. “Where Gundam fans say, ‘Yeah, this is my Gundam.’” As both Metal Gear Solid and Gundam are in active development, Vogt-Roberts isn’t sure which he’ll tackle first as that’s something the studios will decide, but he did said, “I love both these things to death.“
