The Metal Gear Solid movie isn't happening. Solid Snake voice actor and Hollywood screenwriter David Hayter dishes what he's heard went down.
"A couple of years ago, a producer friend of mine asked me if I would be interested in doing the adaptation," Hayter, who wrote the big screen version of X-Men, tells MTV. "I think I can say without contradiction that I know it better than any screenwriter on the planet. I've said every word that Snake has said. So I felt well-qualified."
Hayter set to work on a draft. And then, everything just kinda petered out with Hayter hearing that things broke down with Konami, the game's publisher.
"On top of that, I don't believe they were ever able to successfully close a deal between Mr. Kojima and Sony," adds Hayter. "This is all just stuff I've heard."
According to the Solid Snake voice actor, he did come up with a "pretty cool" pitch, but is staying mum about his concept. He would still love to do it, however. "But there are far larger issues in terms of who's going to get the rights to do it and what sort of involvement Mr. Kojima is going to have," says Hayter. "All that needs to be worked out before I would ever come up."
Sources close to the project previously told Kotaku that reason for the movie not happening was money. Sony Pictures was willing to finance somewhere between $40 million ~ $80 million for the film; however, Kojima Productions and Konami balked, believing that the figure was not enough to create a proper cinematic version of the game. By today's standard, the budget would have put Metal Gear Solid at the lower end of the production scale. For comparison's sake, Sony Pictures film Spider-Man 3 had a $300 million budget.
"Video game companies are very protective of their property and there are certain things a studio requires freedom-wise to market and distribute a movie effectively in a global marketplace and sometimes getting those two things to match up is really hard," says producer Michael De Luca, who was slated to produce the film. "And in the case of Metal Gear Solid, the agendas just….not because the parties weren't amicable, it was just kind of impossible to get the agendas to match up."
DAVID HAYTER GUEST BLOG: Whatever Happened To That 'Metal Gear Solid' Movie? [MTV Movies Blog]