Death Stranding will not be stranded in the current writers’ strike imbroglio, say its producers.

The much-anticipated film adaptation of Hideo Kojima’s 2019 video game is still on course via Kojima Productions and Hammerstone Studios, where pre-production has already taken place.

Producer Allan Ungar told an interviewer with Screen Rant that some “very exciting news” would be announced shortly.

The Death Stranding game immerses players in a surreal, post-apocalyptic setting where the boundaries between the world of the living and the world of the dead have been breached, causing mass societal chaos in the United States.



In the upcoming film adaptation, Norman Reedus will star as Sam Porter Ridges, a courier who moves across the devastated landscape in search of isolated survivors and communities. Other cast members include Troy Baker, Tommie Earl Jenkins, Mads Mikkelsen, Margaret Qualley, Lea Seydoux, and Lindsay Wagner, with cameo appearances by the filmmakers Guillermo del Toro and Nicolas Winding Refen.

“This is an incredibly, incredibly important undertaking for [Kojima],” said Ungar. “This is his baby, this is the first time that he went out on his own as an independent studio, and made a game, and that game became critically acclaimed, it became very prolific. Unfortunately, due to the strike, and due to sort of everything that’s happening in our industry right now, I can’t say as much as I’d like to, other than there’s going to be some very exciting news coming up soon, and we’re incredibly excited about the direction that we’re taking it in.”

Ungar added that Hideo Kojima was involved “every step of the way” in the adaptation, though he wouldn’t actually be directing the film. Kojima had earlier said that the film version would be different than the game, but no further details have emerged.

Death Stranding was published in 2019 for the PlayStation 4. It was the first game by Kojima and Kojima Productions after splitting from Konami in 2015.

It has since been released for other devices, including a Windows version and PlayStation 5. Within two years of its debut, the game had sold some five million copies worldwide.
 
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