Back in 2008 the game-to-movie project was announced but has suffered in development purgatory ever since. In April ‘09 Universal demanded the budget shrink from $160 million.
Pre-production screeched to a halt on it when no studio would touch the R-rated version that was planned. Verbinksi was adamant he wouldn’t water it down. Pun!
”I couldn’t really get past anybody that would spend the money that it would take to do it and keep an R rating,” explained the Gore Verbinksi, a Pirates of the Caribbean big cheese. ”Alternately, I wasn’t really interested in pursuing a PG-13 version. Because the R rating is inherent. Little Sisters and injections and the whole thing. I just wanted to really, really make it a movie where, four days later, you’re still shivering and going, ‘Jesus Christ!’”
2K’s BioShock is certainly no kid friendly adventure with the themes it deals with and severe genetic abuses it’s underwater denizens were subjected to. ”It’s a movie that has to be really, really scary, but you also have to create a whole underwater world, so the price tag is high. We just didn’t have any takers on an R-rated movie with that price tag.”
Creator Ken Levine says there’s really no need for a film anyway. He and the development team have no burning desire ”to have a movie made just to get it made,” he said.
”For us and for Take-Two, it’s really got to be something that will a) give the fans something that they want, and b) for those who don’t know BioShock, really introduce them to something that is consistent with the game, and is it going to be a good representation of the game.”
”There are differences between games and movies, no doubt, but the movie has to draw from the same DNA in terms of the world and the story beats. But you know, we don’t have a need to get it made.”
Are you hopeful if a BioShock movie does get made then Gore Verbinksi’s R-rated one sees the light of day?
