Fans of Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding creator Hideo Kojima's work will surely never forget the cancellation of Silent Hills. One of the biggest video game cancellations of the past decade and one that caused a major downward spiral for publisher Konami, including Kojima's departure from the company as a whole. The cancellation of Silent Hills was only made worse by the fact that players even got a taste for the game's horror with P.T., the playable teaser that Konami and Kojima Productions released to announce the title. While Silent Hills is dead and buried, Hideo Kojima thankfully doesn't seem to be done with horror, at least according to manga legend Junji Ito, who is in talks to work with him once again.
Junji Ito, artist and writer behind some of the most beloved horror manga of all-time such as Uzumaki and Tomie, was originally attached to Silent Hills in 2013, a year before the game's announcement at Gamescom 2014, when Hideo Kojima and film director Guillermo del Toro approached him to design monsters for the game, despite not having previously worked on a video game. Despite this, Ito went on to confirm in 2019 that he never even started designing monsters before the game's cancellation.
In a n interview during Comic-Con 2020, when asked if he has been approached to work on another video game, Junji Ito stated "I do know director Kojima and we have been in conversation that he may have a horror-based game that he may be doing, and so he has invited me to work on that, but there are no details on it yet." Fans of Kojima's Productions' titles may recognize Ito as The Engineer, one of the first preppers the player interacts with during Death Stranding. Ito leant his likeness to the game while visiting Kojima Productions at some point during the game's development.
Earlier this year rumors started to circulate about a possible Silent Hills revival thanks to Sony, who was apparently trying to reunite Konami and Kojima Productions to work on the title. While Konami denied these rumors, another horror manga artist, Suehiro Maruo, has teased that they are working on something Silent Hill related. Hideo Kojima has made it clear that he wants his next title to be a horror game, and given Ito's legacy and popularity worldwide, it would only be a match made in heaven to see the two work together, however it seems like it will be a long time before Kojima is ready to talk about his next project, especially if Ito has not yet officially signed on to it.
Via: Comicbook