Image: Amazon Prime Video
The show’s creator still wants to make the game happen.
Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima has revealed that he had to cancel a superhero-related project his studio had in the works for being too similar to The Boys. For those not in the know, The Boys is a dark parody of superhero teams like The Avengers and the Justice League, now airing its third season on Amazon Prime Video.
It’s worth noting that Kojima’s game development studio, Kojima Productions, is now working on movies and music on top of its games, so this project might not have been a videogame. Kojima tweeted about The Boys’ first season, saying, “The concept was the same, a black "anti-hero" story in which a superhero and a human face off, but the setting, gimmicks, and tone were very different from what I had in mind for my previous project.”
The Boys follows a group of individuals without powers who try to take down a corrupt team of superheroes, so one can see similarities between the two. Kojima said he put the project on hold after watching a few episodes of the series because the concept was similar. Kojima tweeted that had he continued developing it, he, “was thinking of Mads as the lead,” referring to Mads Mikkelsen, who starred in his previous game Death Stranding.
Elaborating further on the concept, Kojima revealed that the story would have taken aim at the current commercialisation of superheroes in the entertainment industry, with a hard-boiled action-oriented story and, “a worldview that is the opposite of what we are used to.” Kojima Productions is still working on games, movies and music right now, so there’s a chance Mads shows up in something else down the line.
The Boys’ showrunner Eric Kripke, meanwhile, is fully enthusiastic about the idea of Kojima making a game based on the show:
Antony Starr, who plays Homelander in the series, also agrees:
Kojima Productions is a busy studio. Along with the unannounced movies and musical projects it has in the works, Hideo Kojima is leading two games already in development: one is a cloud-based game for Xbox Game Studios, while the second is a sequel to Death Stranding.