The Death Stranding movie adaptation has landed a director.
Two years after movie production studio A24 boarded the movie adaptation of Kojima Productions’ open-world game Death Stranding, the project has now landed a director. According to Deadline, Michael Sarnoski has boarded the movie after helming Death of Robin Hood for A24, with plans to both write and direct the live-action adaptation.
Sarnoski is best known for directing A Quiet Place: Day One. Before that, he earned acclaim for directing the Nicolas Cage picture Pig.
Death Stranding movie gets a director as production takes shape.
A live-action cinematic adaptation of the PlayStation 4 open-world game Death Stranding was first announced in 2022. The movie adaptation was being developed in close collaboration with game director Hideo Kojima, and was said to feature “new elements and characters” separate from the video game. Hence, don’t expect the movie to be a direct adaptation of the game.
This week, the movie finally showed signs of life after all these years of development time. Deadline reported that Michael Sarnoski has been chosen by A24 to direct the movie adaptation, while Sarnoski remains in post-production on his next film for the studio: Death of Robin Hood. A24 and Kojima Productions are still slated to produce the film, along with Lars Knudsen and Ari Aster’s Square Peg.
Here’s how Deadline describes the film:
“The film will delve into the game’s mysteries surrounding the “Death Stranding”—a catastrophic series of events that blurred the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead, bringing forth nightmarish creatures into a fragmented world on the brink of collapse.”
It’s fortuitous that the film’s production is finally taking shape this year, as this announcement comes off the back of a new trailer for Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. The sequel was announced to launch this summer, on 26 June, 2025, with a rather meaty trailer diving into its many characters and wide new world to explore.
