I have a long list of favorite games from the PlayStation 4 era like Marvel’s Spider-Man, Horizon Zero Dawn, and The Last of Us Part II. However, there is one Sony exclusive that captured my imagination (and hours upon hours of my free time) more than the rest, and that was Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima.
Ever since I picked up the game inspired by classic Samurai movies back in the summer of 2020 and spent the better part of three months diving into its rich world, lore, and story centering on Jin Sakai, I’ve anxiously awaited a film adaptation. So, when I found out that John Wick franchise director Chad Stahelski was the one leading the charge, I became extremely optimistic about the upcoming video game movie.
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Stahelski to discuss everything from the John Wick movies to his planned Highlander reboot, and I wasn’t going to let the conversation end before I brought up Ghost of Tsushima. It turns out the stuntman-turned-director was so taken aback by the game upon first playing it with creative partner Alex Young, he hit up Sucker Punch to talk about it:
We got in touch with Sucker Punch and I went, ‘Hey, I’m Chad Stahelski, I do the John Wick movies. I love the fucking characters in your game. Like, I love this. … And I was like, ‘I just gotta do this.’ And if that means an all Japanese cast and doing it Japanese and staying true to the game, that makes it even better for me because I love Asian cinema, and more than that, I’ve been going to Japan since I was 17, so I’m a big fan of the culture and the history.
After watching John Wick: Chapter 4 and its absolutely stunning Osaka Continental sequence, it’s easy to pick up on Stahelski’s admiration of the culture, as the extensive, and incredibly violent, set piece honors multiple aspects of Japanese life and history.
When I asked him about the Ghost of Tsushima development process, Stahelski gave me an update that has me even more fired up, which is saying something because I’ve been OBSESSED with this project since hearing about it. What got me even more pumped was what came next:
We have so many ideas for it. We’ve been developing it for two solid years and I really love it. We have a full script. We’re in full development right now. We’ve been in a very close partnership with Sony ever since we’ve been attached. You know how Hollywood works between schedules and availability, but it’s in the front runner of what I’d love to do.
It’s hard to say when Ghost of Tsushima will come to fruition, but this update about its script and development process should be seen as a great sign of things to come. Another thing we’ll have to wait to find out is if Stahelski’s adaptation will be in black-and-white like the game’s optional “Kurosawa” mode, which pays tribute to the legendary filmmaker responsible for many of the great Samurai films. And who knows, maybe we’ll see the movie pop up on the 2024 movie calendar before everything is said and done.
