New details from a former Konami executive say the Wachowskis personally asked Hideo Kojima to develop an official The Matrix tie-in in 1999. Still, Konami’s leadership refused and kept Kojima focused on Metal Gear Solid 2. The account appears in an interview with Time Extension. Christopher Bergstresser, a former Konami VP, says the Wachowskis visited Konami’s Tokyo HQ with concept artist Geoff Darrow and asked Kojima outright to make the game. Bergstresser recalls that Kazumi Kitaue, a senior Konami figure, shut down the idea, insisting that Kojima stay on the studio’s biggest franchise.
The consequence was that the official Matrix license went elsewhere, landing at Shiny Entertainment, which produced Enter the Matrix and later The Path of Neo. Those games received mixed receptions and did not become enduring landmarks for the franchise. Elements of Kojima’s own work from that era show creative overlap with The Matrix. He attended the film’s Japanese premiere and noted similarities between Neo’s wall-running and a concept for an MGS2 character. Bergstresser’s recollection lines up with Kojima’s 1999 diary entries, which describe meeting the Wachowskis and Darrow in Shinjuku and expressing interest in an adaptation before it was halted.
Two decades late,r Kojima built his own distinct, self-referential world with Death Stranding, and he is now working independently on a new espionage project, Physint. Meanwhile, Konami has continued to reposition its legacy properties and prepare new teams to handle franchises that once centered on Kojima’s work; see our coverage of Konami preparing new developers to handle Metal Gear Solid for more on that transition.
If Kojima had taken on The Matrix, the result would likely have been a very different mainstream tie-in, one that might have folded his philosophical bent into a blockbuster license. Instead, the industry saw a split: Kojima stayed with Metal Gear, the Wachowskis worked with a different studio, and both creators moved forward on their own paths.
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