‘Metal Gear Solid’ Movie Lands ‘Kong: Skull Island’ Co-Writer Derek Connolly
Sony’s
Metal Gear Solid is adding a fresh yet familiar talent to its writing team. Back in 2012,
Derek Connolly wrote
Safety Not Guaranteed, a good indie flick that went unseen by most moviegoers. Luckily, one of the folks who
did see the Sundance hit was a fella by the name of
Steven Spielberg. That changed everything. In 2015, Connolly was part of the writing team for
Jurassic World, a bad, big-budget film that was seen by millions. That success was followed up by the bizarre one-two punch of
Monster Trucks and
Kong: Skull Island, the latter being a collaboration between Connolly and director
Jordan Vogt-Roberts. Connolly and Vogt-Roberts will now reunite for Sony’s big-screen adaptation of Konami’s classic video game franchise.
Variety reports that Connolly has come aboard
Metal Gear Solid to take a crack at the latest draft of the script. And that’s pretty much all the detail that’s available at the moment. But as Connolly finds himself increasingly busy writing high-profile projects, the lesson here is clear: Just get yourself noticed by Spielberg and everything else will sort itself out. Connolly also has scripts for such tiny films as
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and
Star Wars: Episode IX to his credit.
Image via Universal
Here’s what else we know about
Metal Gear Solid: Vogt-Roberts spoke about his vision for the adaptation
earlier this year, saying:
“Metal Gear Solid is probably the most important franchise to me on the planet. It is such a genius, idiosyncratic work and being able to spend time with [Hideo] Kojima recently has been like a dream … 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.
“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. 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 … 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.”
More recently, Vogt-Roberts talked about working on other non-feature film projects as a bit of a mental break following
Kong: Skull Island and before diving into
Metal Gear Solid. But make no mistake, once he officially starts production on the highly anticipated film, he’ll be going all out. The addition of Connolly as a collaborator adds some familiarity to the project and will hopefully ease any creative rough spots along the way. Keep an eye out for more on this project as it develops over the upcoming months.
