Junji Ito, the acclaimed manga artist and writer whose works include Uzumaki, Gyo, and Tomie, was once attached to Silent Hills, the game that was teased with the PS4 P.T. demo. Silent Hills was being worked on by Metal Gear Solid’s Hideo Kojima, filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, and actor Norman Reedus before it was tragically cancelled, and now Ito has shed some more light on his tie to the project.
Speaking to Polygon, Ito has spoken about his one meeting with Kojima and del Toro, and the nervousness he experienced during it. “Hideo Kojima-san contacted me about a Silent Hill sequel that he was in the beginning stages of working on, but the project was cancelled before before I got too involved,” he recalls. “Apparently the first person he spoke to was the director Guillermo del Toro, and as the two of them discussed the project, my name came up.”
Ito says that he’s “not too familiar with video games,” but that he had a meeting with the two men. While del Toro discussed his ideas, Ito had never played a Silent Hill game: “I just sat there feeling anxious the entire time,” he recalls.
“At the end of the meeting I took some illustrations of monsters I had drawn before that I had printed out and handed them over to the two directors for reference,” Ito says, noting that the three of them never met again. However, he’s not ruling out a future collaboration. “If Kojima-san contacts me again, I’d love to contribute as much as I’m able to,” he says.
Hideo Kojima has indicated in the past that he might return to horror for a future game, despite some earlier comments saying he likely wasn’t.
Uzumaki, Ito’s masterpiece, is getting an animated adaptation through Toonami.
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