Reedus went on to explain how he met director Hideo Kojima, which is an interesting story on its own. “Guillermo Del Toro, who gave me my first movie, called me up and said, ‘Hey, there’s a guy named Hideo Kojima, he’s gonna call you, just say yes.’ And I go, ‘What do you mean just say yes?’ He goes, ‘Stop being an asshole, just say yes.’” When the two finally met in person, Kojima showed Reedus his latest project, Silent Hills. That title was canceled in 2015 but Reedus and Kojima eventually came together to work on Death Stranding.
“It took me maybe two or three years to finish all the MoCap sessions and everything,” Reedus told Leo. “It takes a lot of work. And then the game came out, and it just won all these awards, and it was a huge thing, so we just started part two of that.” Death Stranding struggled a bit out of the gate due to lofty expectations but support eventually picked up. Last summer, Kojima Productions announced it had sold five million copies up to that point. A director’s cut launched on PlayStation 5 last September. Reedus’ admission probably doesn’t fit everyone’s definition of official confirmation of the sequel, but it seems unlikely he would simply make up something like that for conversation sake. Assuming the timeline is accurate and Kojima Productions really did just start working on a follow-up, it’ll likely be several more years before a finished product is ready to ship. That said, Summer Game Fest is just a few weeks away and would be the perfect stage for Kojima to shore up Reedus’ comments.
