Roughly a decade and a half ago, Universal announced it was moving forward with a movie based on BioShock, the wildly popular Take-Two Interactive video game of the same name. They brought in John Logan to hammer out a script, hired the great Gore Verbinski to helm the project, and had even constructed a massive series of sets down in Australia … before unceremoniously shutting the whole thing down a mere eight weeks before it was due to go in front of cameras. The reason? They got cold feet about dropping somewhere north of $160M on a hard-R video game adaptation.
Gore Verbinski’s BioShock is one of the most intriguing and haunting “almost happened” movies of my lifetime, and its frequently terrifying script (which I read back in 2020, and wrote about it in heartbreaking detail here) proved beyond a reasonable doubt that such an adaptation could work with the right creative team. All it needed was a studio with the bank account and the nerve to make it happen.
Enter: Netflix. Yesterday, Deadline revealed that the BioShock movie is back on track at the streaming giant, with I Am Legend and Constantine director Francis Lawrence in the director’s chair and Blade Runner 2019‘s Michael Green writing the script. That’s an encouraging start, and we’re excited to see what they do with it, but it’s worth noting that we won’t be getting a look at this bad boy for some time — Lawrence is currently filming a Hunger Games prequel, and will be occupied with that into next year.
Nothing further to report at this time, but we’re crossing our fingers that this one succeeds where previous iterations of a BioShock movie failed. Stay tuned for further updates as they roll in.
