Alan Ritchson’s stock was already rising before War Machine crashed onto Netflix, but that movie gave the fan-casting machine a whole new level of energy. Once an actor starts feeling bigger than the project they’re currently promoting, people immediately start imagining what else they could lead next. In Ritchson’s case, one of the loudest suggestions was also one of the most obvious. If you watched War Machine and thought it felt like a live-action riff on a certain legendary stealth-action franchise, you definitely weren’t the only one. Now, just a month after Ritchson openly teased that role as “the dream,” the movie itself is finally moving forward.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Sony is officially moving ahead with a Metal Gear Solid movie, with Final Destination: Bloodlines filmmakers Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein set to direct for Columbia Pictures. The project is part of a sweeping first-look deal the duo has signed with Sony, and the film will be produced by Avi Arad and Ari Arad. It marks the latest major attempt to bring Hideo Kojima’s landmark stealth-action franchise to the big screen after years of stop-start development. Yes, that means we might get the visual of Jack Reacher creeping around in a cardboard box.
That timing makes the news especially fun for Ritchson fans. Back on March 15, the actor shared a Solid Snake-inspired image on Instagram with the caption, “The Dream” and “La Li Lu Le Lo,” making it very clear he wasn’t exactly subtle about wanting in. Around the same time, fan art and social posts started leaning into the comparison even harder, especially after War Machine took off on Netflix.
Who Are Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein?
They’re a directing duo who’ve gone from cult sci-fi guys to legit studio players pretty fast. Lipovsky is a Canadian filmmaker and VFX specialist, while Adam B. Stein is an American writer-director-editor. A lot of people first clocked them because both appeared on Steven Spielberg’s 2007 filmmaking competition series On the Lot, where Stein finished in the Top 3 and Lipovsky was also a finalist.
The project that really helped them make their name was Freaks, the 2018 indie sci-fi thriller they wrote and directed. It premiered in TIFF’s Discovery section and became the kind of breakout that got the right people in the industry paying attention.
More recently, they leveled up in a big way with Final Destination: Bloodlines. The film was a major hit, grossing more than $317 million worldwide, and that success helped make them two of the hotter directing names in town.
via Collider