Oscar Isaac Metal Gear Solid Movie Dead?

It wasn’t that long ago that he seemed confident the movie was going to happen, but now it looks like this film is about as likely to see the light of day as franchise creator Hideo Kojima is to return to Konami.

One reason to be cynical about Oscar Isaac’s Metal Gear Solid movie coming out is the fact that a movie based on the hit video game has been in some form of preproduction for the last 16 years.

Hideo Kojima announced the movie in 2006 and it seemed dead by 2010, but more recently, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Columbia Pictures began collaborating on plans to bring the long-awaited film to life finally.

As recently as March 2022, Oscar Isaac told IGN that the film would still happen but that filmmakers were having trouble finding the right Metal Gear Solid story to tell.

In our opinion, it shouldn’t take nearly this long to adapt a film from a game that came out way back in 1998.

Certainly, there have been some provocative sequels and prequels to the Metal Gear Solid franchise over the years, but the core premise of the first game seems quite easy to adapt: it’s the story of a covert agent taking on a series of increasingly powerful and colorful foes.

Now that it’s been a year and a half since Isaac admitted filmmakers were struggling with this very basic story, we think it’s significantly less likely this movie will ever get released.

Another reason we’re confident that Oscar Isaac’s Metal Gear Solid movie won’t be happening is because the actor has a full slate of upcoming projects.

Aside from Metal Gear, three other movies are in pre-production: London, Frankenstein, and Francis and the Godfather.

We know that the writer’s and actor’s strikes added unexpected delays to many movies, so we fully expect Isaac to be kept busy for the foreseeable future simply bringing these films to life.

That brings us to one of the blunter realities of why Oscar Isaac is unlikely to star in Metal Gear Solid. He’s already a bit old for the part, and like all of us, he ain’t getting any younger.

He certainly looks fantastic for his age, but at 44 years old, Isaac is already a full 11 years older than Snake was supposed to be during the events of the first Metal Gear Solid game. 

If the movie ever goes into production, Isaac is likely to be pushing 50, and while James Bond star Daniel Craig has set a precedent for older action stars, fans might not want a Snake nearly two decades older than he is supposed to be.

On a related note, if the film is successful, then Sony and Columbia will expect sequels.

Considering that Craig was 53 when he finally stopped playing James Bond and was 38 when he started, the sad truth is that Oscar Isaac (who is seemingly a superfan of the Metal Gear Solid series) couldn’t realistically headline an ongoing action franchise like this.

As always, we’d love to be proven wrong. Oscar Isaac is one of the hottest actors in Hollywood right now, and we think his talent and passion would help him do a Metal Gear Solid movie justice.

Unfortunately, we think the movie doesn’t have a chance of getting off the ground even with all of Isaac’s star power behind it.

If that makes you want to hide under a box, remember that it could be worse: we could finally get a Metal Gear Solid movie but, in a terrible twist, it focuses on Isaac’s fellow Dune star Timothée Chalamet as Raiden.