You might have heard the story that Nicolas Winding Refn was about to convince Hideo Kojima to include Keanu Reeves instead of Mads Mikkelsen in Death Stranding, even though it was the movie director that allowed Kojima to meet Mikkelsen in the first place.
You might have heard the story that Nicolas Winding Refn was about to convince Hideo Kojima to include Keanu Reeves instead of Mads Mikkelsen in Death Stranding, even though it was the movie director that allowed Kojima to meet Mikkelsen in the first place.
The Japanese game designer and director has confirmed the story in a recent interview around the days of the Tokyo Game Show 2019 and added that he would still like to work with Reeves in movies, TV shows or games if there will ever be the occasion to do so.
“Keanu is a great guy,” Kojima told GameSpot. “I have a close friend, Nicolas Refn, he introduced me to Mads, and I made an offer to Mads to be in the game. I went to Denmark and talked to Nicolas again before I gave the offer to Mads, and I said I met Mads a couple of times, but I really wanted to reconfirm with Nicolas that I really should work with Mads.”
“Nicolas said, “I made Mads grow. He’s great, but the best guy is Keanu,” and he was doing Neon Demon at that time. So he was trying to persuade me to use Keanu, and I thought maybe I will change from Mads to Keanu,” he added.
After saying he is very happy about sticking to Mikkelsen eventually, Kojima also shared that “in the future, it would be great if we could work together” with the actor of The Matrix.
“It could be a game, or maybe a movie or TV I might work on, so maybe next time (…) When I met Keanu, I was shocked that he was so polite; a real good guy. Were are only one year apart in age, so the appreciation towards a lot of things are similar, I think. So in the future, I would like to offer something to Keanu,” he revealed.
With Death Stranding possibly having some sequel, there’s a chance we could get Reeves into them, even though he is going to be an essential piece of the puzzle when Cyberpunk 2077 releases next year.
