Metal Gear Solid Director Says Movie Could Be 'Massive'

Video game movies have a mixed track record, and the director of the upcoming Metal Gear Solid adaptation wants to make sure it has more in common with the success of Resident Evil than the infamy of BloodRayne.

Jordan Vogt-Roberts opened up about the flick to Collider, and he said he wants to take his time developing the movie.

"Metal Gear Solid is probably the most important franchise to me on the planet," he said. "It is such a genius, idiosyncratic work and being able to spend time with [Hideo] Kojima recently has been like a dream. He's the best and his whole team is the best. We are working on the script. That is a property that I will fight tooth and nail to make sure is done properly because it's so easy to screw it up and so easy for a studio to try and make it into G.I. Joe or try and make it into Mission: Impossible or try and make it into something that it's not. Metal Gear Solid needs to be exactly what it needs to be, which is Metal Gear Solid."

He also revealed that the movie's budget and rating will go a long way towards helping to decide the film's tone.

"I want to make the version of the movie that is most true to what it needs to be, so if that is a Deadpool or Logan route where you go with a smaller budget and you're able to make it R, great," he said. "If you need to blow it out more and really get that bigger budget and go PG-13, I think it could exist in both avenues. There are hyper-violent parts to Metal Gear but I would not necessarily call the hyper-violent part the core element of it versus like the tone and the voice and the philosophies that the characters exhibit. Those characters sort of are these walking philosophies, so I think nailing that part is far more important necessarily than thinking about the rating at this point, because right now we're just trying to get the best version of it."

But when it comes to the story, Vogt-Roberts said he won't make many compromises.

"Metal Gear is an important story, an important set of characters," he said. "So it just needs to be approached right now from how we nail that, and once we nail that then budget questions will happen, then those things will happen down the road. But right now, I'm just working with incredible producers and trying to make a version that you or a Metal Gear megafan would be proud of... where people would be comfortable with that version to say, 'I know this is different, I know this is not exactly the way a normal movie might go, but this is very Metal Gear' and that is what will make random Joe Schmoe in Nebraska who has no idea what Metal Gear is, that is what will make them fall in love with this franchise and with Solid Snake and these people, and that is what will make them say–beyond the nerdverse and things like that who already accept this thing as super important–it's such a potentially massive thing that we're focused on getting that right first."

There's no real timetable for the movie just yet, but we'll keep you posted. Let's just hope it doesn't end up on this list of video game movies that never got made.