Oscar Isaac is set to play Solid Snake in a Metal Gear Solid movie in the near future, and he recently explained what attracted him to the project. To put it simply: he just adores the stealth game series.
“I just loved the game. I love the feeling that the game would give me every time I’d play,” he told Total Film, by way of GamesRadar. “It’s just a strangely isolated, mournful, lonely game to play that has these incredible moments of violence and terror, with these weird, psychedelic concepts and villains. But, yes, it’s kind of like psychedelic military horror things that happen.”
A science fiction movie based on the Metal Gear series has been in development since 2006. Back in 2014, Jordan Vogt-Roberts, director of Kong: Skull Island, came on to direct, and we’ve had occasional updates since. In 2018, the screenplay, co-written by Vogy-Roberts and Derek Connolly, was finished, and Isaac boarded to play ongoing protagonist Solid Snake in late 2020. Isaac says part of what attracted him to the production is the challenge of committing it to film.
“The truth is, underneath the whole thing, it’s an anti-war story. So I think those are the elements I really love,” he explains. “And, like I said, I love the feel of playing it, and the big question of: can something like that be transferred – or can you explore those themes in a really interesting way – on film?”
At the moment, Isaac’s about to return to the big screen for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, which opens in October. He plays Leto Atreides, the patriarch of House of Atreides who’s given dominion over the spice mines of Arrakis. Right now, Dune is just one movie, but Villeneuve already has plans for a second.
After that, Isaac is heading to the Marvel Cinematic Universe for Moon Knight, a new series coming to streaming service Disney Plus. Once that’s done, Metal Gear Solid will probably film. Here’s the best sci-fi series to scratch that futuristic itch in the meantime.