'Metal Gear Solid' Director Reveals Film's Greatest Challenge

Jordan Vogt-Roberts is working on a Metal Gear Solid movie to create what he refers to as "the first great video game movie," but such an imposing brand as Metal Gear presented the director with several challenges.

One of these challenges, Vogt-Roberts told Collider in an interview, is working with a world as complex as Metal Gear's is, a universe that he refers to as "sprawling" and "dense." With differing timelines, a mix of characters and clones, and several spinoffs throughout the years, it's easy to imagine that reigning Metal Gear Solid in for a movie wouldn't be easy. Vogt-Roberts said that he thinks the team working on the movie has overcome this challenge by finding a way to represent as much of the story as needs to be shown.

"The thing about Metal Gear is it's intentionally sprawling and it's intentionally dense," Vogt-Roberts told Collider. "It'd be super easy to do one sliver of it or do too much at once. And we've spent the last little bit really trying to figure out, to me, the most Kojima-san inspired way to tackle as much of that story through a device that I think allows you to tap in…how to put this without spoiling it? Regardless, we have a device that I think allows us to respect the breadth of the franchise, respect the sprawling nature of the franchise, respect the somewhat convoluted nature of the franchise at times. But to still show you the mirrors. What I mean by that is all those timelines fundamentally exist because they show the repetition of war throughout time. They show the repetition and the cycle of pain throughout time. So it's almost impossible to tell just one story now. You need the full throughline of what this game is about."

While no cast announcements have been made for the Metal Gear Solid movie, we know that work on the script has been moving right along. Vogt-Roberts and co-scriptwriter Derek Connelly said in the past that they've been reworking the script since August of last year and hinted at how wild the script would be with his recent Collider sit-down expanding on that.

"Even if I wasn't involved in this movie I would read that script and say, 'Holy shit,'" he said. "It represents a different approach to a video game movie. It represents a different approach to how a three-act structure is put on screen."

Details regarding the film's release date and casting have yet to be announced.