Death Stranding Movie Coming From A24, Kojima Productions [IGN]

It’s official – Death Stranding is getting a movie from A24 and Kojima Productions.

The news comes today as A24 makes a new T-shirt available – a tie-in that depicts the A24 logo in Death Stranding style… and it’s the product description that has tipped us off to the collaboration.

“It’s official: we’ve partnered with Kojima Productions on the live-action feature film adaptation of Hideo Kojima’s acclaimed video game, Death Stranding,” reads the T-shirt description.

Unfortunately, that’s all we’re getting, for now. The T-shirt itself depicts A24’s instantly recognizable logo complete with strands – mashing up the studio’s own logo with the logo from the hit video game.

Death Stranding was directed by gaming legend Hideo Kojima and is set in the United States following a cataclysmic event that leaves dangerous, destructive creatures roaming the Earth. The player assumes the role of freelance courier Sam Porter Bridges (played by Norman Reedus) who is accompanied by a Bridge Baby – a premature child contained in a mobile pod that allows Sam to sense the presence of nearby creatures (known as BTs).

The game was originally released in 2019 and a feature film adaptation has been in the works for some time. However, while Kojima is said to be “deeply involved” with the film, he has confirmed that he won’t be directing it personally.

“Just to be clear, I am deeply involved in producing, supervising, plotting, look, design, and content of the film adaptation of [Death Stranding], just not in charge of directing,” he said.

The upcoming film adaptation was announced back in 2022 and will “introduce new elements and characters within the Death Stranding universe.”

Unfortunately, little else has been reported about it since, but Kojima has always wanted his studio to start making films, and opened a movie, TV, and music division in 2021.

IGN’s Death Stranding review gave the game 6.8/10 and said: “Death Stranding just can’t consistently get the balance right despite possessing equally lofty ambitions and countless inventive ideas. There is a fascinating, fleshed-out world of supernatural science fiction to enjoy across its sprawling and spectacular map, so it’s a real shame that it’s all been saddled on a gameplay backbone that struggles to adequately support its weight over the full course of the journey. It’s fitting that Kojima Productions’ latest is so preoccupied with social media-inspired praise because in some ways I did ‘Like’ Death Stranding. I just didn’t ever love it.”

Want to read more about Death Stranding? Check out Hideo Kojima’s Criterion Collection favorites and find out how Death Stranding 2 may have been teased with mocap videos.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.