Back in April of 2009, just weeks after director Gore Verbinski exited Walt Disney Pictures‘ super-popular Pirates of the Caribbean franchise to helm the big-screen adaptation of Take-Two Interactive‘s epic video game BioShock, Universal Pictures froze the project, reportedly balking at its estimated $160 million budget.
The following August, Verbinski stepped out of the director’s chair on the project, remaining a producer while Universal hired Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (28 Weeks Later) to helm the big-screen adaptation. All went quiet on the project for quite some time, until Verbinski reassured fans that the movie was still a-go in an interview.
Verbinski said,
“We’re working trying to make it. The problem with BioShock was: R-rated movie, underwater, horror. It’s a really expensive R-rated movie, so we’re trying to figure out a way working with [director] Juan Carlos [Fresnadillo] to get the budget down and still keep so it’s true to the core audience, you know? The thing is it has to be R, a hard R.”
“We don’t want to dumb it down, we don’t want to make it PG-13. We want to keep it really edgy, and it’s a huge bill”
Then, in an interview last fall BioShock video game designer Ken Levine made the adaptation sound a whole lot less likely to actually happen.
Levine said:
“It is something we are actively talking about and actively working on.” That doesn’t mean filming of the project is 100 percent certain. “The movie business is complicated – I can’t tell you whether it’s going to happen for sure or it’s not going to happen for sure, “But it’s something we are actively discussing, quite actively, and actively working on.”
Now, things have apparently changed a bit. In a recent interview with Industry Gamers, Levine gave them a new update on the project’s progress:
“We got very close to having it get made – we had a deal in place and a director. But for us there’s no burning [desire] to have a movie made just to get it made,” Levine stressed to us. “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,” then reiterating: “But you know, we don’t have a need to get it made.”
That’s kind of a drag for all you Big Daddys and Little Sisters out there, but at least BioShock Infinite will hit shelves next year!
