It’s been over two years since Sony greenlit of movie adaptation of Ghost of Tsushima, with Chad Stahelski of John Wick fame set to direct the film, and in this new era of successful film and TV adaptations of games, there’s plenty of excitement surrounding what a good movie based on Sucker Punch’s samurai epic would look like. Though what’s the current status of the project?
According to the aforementioned Chad Stahelski, the project is continuing to make good progress behind the scenes. In a recent interview with ComicBookMovie, Stahelski confirmed that the film is “in heavy development”.
He remarked that given the strong narrative and characters that the game boasts itself, there’s plenty of confidence that the movie will have good material to dive into, with the team currently being focused more on how to properly keep the unique visual aesthetic of the game intact and translate it into a more condensed on-screen experience- which is something Stahelski has spoken of in the past as well.
“That’s something we’re in heavy development on,” he said. “I love the property. The game’s story of Jin Sakai, and it being what I would say is the most anti-samurai samurai movie out there because of the storylines and thematics in it. The journey that Jin Sakai goes through from his transition or his choices of who to become and what the people need him to become and what he is honourbound to do and he what needs to become is so interesting to me. The story and the characters in the story are definitely something I don’t want to lose in any way.
“It’s [also] the visuals I want to keep. It’s just, how do I pack that much information into a feature that can go on to other features or a TV project or platform for that? The trick is not, ‘do we have great material?’ We know we have great material. It’s how to make it palpable in any platform, you know, ‘how do we make a great two, two and a half hour movie out of this?’ Make it satisfying and leave it open to expand further from there. That’s the real challenge, is how to take so much [that’s] great and get it down to a watchable level.”
Previously, Stahleski has also said that he wants the Ghost of Tsushima film to be completely in Japanese, and that Sony is on board with that idea. Last year, it was also confirmed that the movie had found its writer in Takashi Doscher- read more on that through here.
Ghost of Tsushima is available on PS5 and PS4. As of July last year, the game had sold 9.7 million copies worldwide. Recently, it also surpassed 1 million units sold in Japan.