With director Jordan Vogt-Roberts apparently still attached to direct, the job of nailing down an actual screenplay for Sony's video game adaptation Metal Gear Solid is of slightly more pressing concern. That gig has fallen to Jay Basu, the British writer fresh from **Monsters: Dark Continent.
Basu is quickly making a name for himself. His action adventure The Pier made the 'Brit List' (like the Black List, but British, do you see?) of buzzy as-yet unproduced screenplays, and he's already ensconsed with Universal developing the new proto-franchise around its roster of classic monsters.
Metal Gear Solid, of course, has been around in several incarnations since 1987, but it's taken years of development for the film version to reach this stage. First announced in 2007, it was shoved back into limbo in 2010 when the producers and game creators Konami couldn’t agree on how to approach the property.
With those issues now seemingly smoothed out, the story of gruff hardcase Solid Snake (real name Dave, at least in the English translation) and his team of anti-terrorist soldiers, who are up against the threat of a nuclear strike, can now move towards screens once again. The campaign to get Crispin Glover playing Psycho Mantis starts here.
Vogt-Roberts might seem an unlikely choice to direct given that his last theatrical feature was the cabin-building comedy-drama Kings Of Summer. But studios have had success handing indie directors the keys to big films before, especially in the case of Rupert Wyatt and Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes or more recently Gareth Edwards and Godzilla.
Vogt-Roberts is himself currently in pre-production on Kong: Skull Island, so Basu likely has a decent amount of time to get his script to the right place. Avi and Ari Arad and Michael De Luca are producing, but Solid Snake is probably still some time away from his first big screen mission.