Metal Gear Movie Director Talks Characters, Breaking The Fourth Wall

While a timeline for production remains unclear, the movie based on the Metal Gear series remains in development, and its director has shared more of his thoughts on what it may look like.

Jordan Vogt-Roberts, who directed the upcoming Kong: Skull Island, was asked by IGN about his Metal Gear project while promoting the new movie. In terms of characters, Cyborg Ninja is someone he deemed as a must.

"I mean, I'm a big Sniper Wolf fan, and when we were sitting down to think about the script at a certain point it was like, 'Is Cyborg Ninja in this movie or not?'" he said. "And the part of me that was a little kid was like, 'There's no world in which I'm ever going to make a Metal Gear movie that Cyborg Ninja is not going to be in.' It's really easy to be like, 'It's a good character to save for the second one,' but no, no, no."

As for breaking the fourth wall, something that has provided the games with some of their most memorable moments, he doesn't view it as necessary, but he is interested.

"I actually do think that considering breaking the fourth wall is an important part of potentially what that movie would be," he said. "Finding a way to do that in an interesting way. I think things like Deadpool have actually shown that you can play with that conceit these days.

"To me, the fourth-wall breaking is a little less important than the walking philosophies and ideologies those characters represent, and getting that right and the tone right and things like that. If breaking the fourth wall makes sense, I'm all for it, [but] I'm more interested in the 'Kojima conversations' about whatever song came out then or whatever--it's that stuff that it just absolutely needs."

Last month, Vogt-Roberts said the script is still in development. He emphasized the importance of such a movie being "done in a way that completely honors what Metal Gear is because it's a classic and it's a seminal work not just in video games, but in media."

Series creator Hideo Kojima praised Vogt-Roberts on Twitter recently, though Kojima would presumably have nothing to do with the movie. He parted ways with Konami and is now at work on Death Stranding, while Konami is developing a new game called Metal Gear Survive.