‘METAL GEAR SOLID’ coming to big screen courtesy of ‘SPIDER-MAN’ producer.
Metal Gear Solid was the game that kick-started the action flick cinematic nonsense pile in the world of video sames, so it is fitting that the pig gets the silver screen treatment. It feels like the franchise has been bandied about for years in regards to a big screen adaptation, but nothing has felt as legitimate as this recent news.
Play List:
Sony has announced that they will be bringing “Metal Gear Solid,” the immensely popular videogame franchise, to the big screen, courtesy of “Spider-Man” producer Avi Arad. The announcement was made at the Metal Gear Anniversary event in Tokyo (via /Film). “Metal Gear Solid” director (and we do mean director – the latter games contained hours of purely cinematic cut scenes) Hideo Kojima was joined onstage by Arad to make the announcement. A “Metal Gear Solid” movie has been in the works for years, with the last notable attempt being in 2008 with producer and former New Line exec Michael De Luca. If anybody can bring “Metal Gear Solid” to the big screen, it’s Arad.
Arad was the founder and former chairman and CEO of Marvel Studios, overseeing the initial crop of movies, most notably the Sam Raimi-directed “Spider-Man” movies (he was also a producer on this summer’s regrettable “Amazing Spider-Man” reboot) and the original Bryan Singer “X-Men” movie. He’s essentially the man responsible for the tidal wave of comic book projects today. So you can either thank him or hurl a sizable chunk of asphalt at him, whichever.
Kotaku quoted Arad at the press conference comparing the two formats. “For many years I fought to bring comics to the big screen. Comic books are now biggest genre in cinema,” Arad told the crowd. “Video games are the comic books of today.” (Wait – aren’t comic books the comic books of today?) Arad certainly buys into this – after leaving Marvel he has been in development on a number of videogame-based properties (all of which have yet to see the light of day or the inside of a movie theater), things like “Mass Effect,” “Twisted Metal,” “Pac-Man,” and the notoriously difficult “Uncharted.” The learning curve on how to translate videogames to movies might be even steeper than it was for the comic book to film transition. Watch out, Arad!