In the three years since Sony began developing its Metal Gear Solid adaptation, its sole accomplishment was locking down The Kings Of Summer helmer Jordan Vogt-Roberts to direct last summer. Since then, word on the movie has gone suspiciously quiet as the project hovered off the radar. Was it simmering away in development limbo? If it was, that’s no longer the case, as Sony has appointed British scribe Jay Basu to tackle scripting duties on the video game adaptation.
Released in 1998, the original Metal Gear Solid game puts the player in the shoes of Solid Snake, a soldier tasked with infiltrating a nuclear weapons facility that’s under the command of terrorists. As well as preventing the terrorists from launching a full-blown nuclear attack, he must also rescue two hostages before completing his mission.
A premise perfect for the multiplexes, it’s still taken ten months since Vogt-Roberts’ appointment as director for producers Avi and Ari Arad to secure a scribe. With Basu now tapping away at a screenplay, the likelihood of seeing a live-action Metal Gear Solid feature is beginning to edge closer to the big screen. The writer’s stock has been on the rise in recent years, particularly with regards to reworking previously existing material. Universal – one of Sony’s rivals – tapped him to join their tapestry of writers collaborating on their relaunched Monsterverse, and he also co-wrote upcoming sequel Monsters: Dark Continent.