BioShock movie in development, Gore Verbinski directing
by Alexander Sliwinski 
{ May 8th 2008 at 11:10PM }
There's also an interview with Verbinski on Variety's Cut Scene blog where he discusses the project. He believes the movie will be rated "R" and says, in terms of the Little Sisters, that he'll take the issue "right up to the edge," not wanting the core audience to feel "betrayed." Though no release date is currently targeted, Verbinski says he'll start pre-production when Logan's script is finished and approved.
[Update: If there was any doubt as to the validity of this story, Take Two itself just issued confirmation that the movie adaptation of its undersea adventure is indeed in the works.]
BioShock was made by 2K Boston and 2K Australia, studios in the Take Two family. Get edumucated, check out our Take-Two Family Album.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
PointyThings @ May 8th 2008 11:14PM
Gore can do it. Pirates was awesome and so was The Weatherman.
Tiptup300 @ May 9th 2008 12:53AM
Dude, Pirates was so hardcore. The HD factor and those effects! Wow, and those lesbians man!
Anticrawl @ May 9th 2008 1:15AM
Yeah dude Pirates was great. I didn't care for that Disney movie with pirates and Johnny Depp though, what was /it/ called?
Mrblonde @ May 9th 2008 1:30AM
Oh, but you can't forget the faking.
Darayz @ May 8th 2008 11:16PM
He had me at "Rated R." So far so good.
Zsavior @ May 8th 2008 11:18PM
I hate to say it but the feel of the game, the setting it really can be done with this director and writer, I am actually interested in saying what they might create.
ww3ace @ May 8th 2008 11:21PM
Wow, I can't beleive a Bioshock movie is going to get made before an Atlas Shrugged movie, even with a 50 year head start...
kihadat @ May 8th 2008 11:22PM
holy shit that's awesome.
Shmil @ May 8th 2008 11:24PM
Would you kindly not half ass the casting
Matt B @ May 8th 2008 11:57PM
It's not going to matter. Do you want to watch someone having to "hack" everything to his advantage? It's not that interesting a story IMO. There are cool parts in the video game, but you can't really put them in a movie and make them be entertaining to watch. OK to do, but not watch.
sicsided @ May 9th 2008 12:08AM
@Matt B
Obviously you haven't watched Macgyver. I'm sure they would find an alternative to it. Once you tell an audience the character can do something, it usually means he can do it through the rest of the story, and thus, show one thing of hacking, then bam, done.
datwig @ May 9th 2008 12:13AM
+ for Bioshock reference :)
why not the LS2LS7? @ May 9th 2008 12:16AM
I've watched MacGyver. I even watched it recently. Most of the episodes actually weren't very good. You just remember the 4 minutes from each episode that were enjoyable. I fear the same thing for this movie.
Matt B @ May 9th 2008 9:40AM
Uh ya sicsided, I even own the tool.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/18/the-macgyver-multitool/
Yourself @ May 8th 2008 11:29PM
BioShock, like Watchmen, in my opinion has no place being a movie. I really hate the obsession with turning everything into movies - art is designed for the media in which it is made. BioShock is one of the ultimate pieces of video game art, and it needs it's video-gameness to be complete. Take the player out of control and you lose a significant chunk of the enjoyment
Some games, some books, some comics make suitable movies. Some contain intangible elements that will never make the transition, so you end up with a movie that simply has a stolen plot.
why not the LS2LS7? @ May 9th 2008 12:02AM
A Lawnmower Man fight scene out of nowhere as a capstone made it seem complete to you?
Mrblonde @ May 9th 2008 1:33AM
Watchman will be epic. At least im hopping so. This is the last little hope I have in Zack Snyder.
Yourself @ May 9th 2008 1:37AM
I really want it to be good, and the pics of The Comedian and Rorschach look awesome. But it's going to need more than cool costumes, and Alan Moore put it best when he said that Watchmen is the exact opposite of anything cinematic.
why not the LS2LS7? @ May 9th 2008 2:23AM
I fully expect Watchmen to suck. And I don't say this in a Ghostrider/Elektra sort of way. That's the normal mode of Hollywood blowing it.
What I mean is that Watchmen is just too complex for a movie. For example, look at the Running Man. A very simple movie, from a short story. All it is is a movie about a TV show where criminals are given the opportunity to earn freedom and prizes by battle on TV against American Gladiators. Of course, it's rigged (spoilarz), but that's not the point. The point is in the movie, that wasn't workable from a Hollywood point of view.
Now, they couldn't have you rooting for a criminal. So they had to make the hero wrongfully convicted of a crime. Not even questionable or just stated, they had to show the scene so you knew. But wait, that wasn't even enough! He had to be a wrongly convicted war hero, so you knew for sure he was good.
This is the problem, and why Moore is right, Watchment is the opposite of cinematic. There's only one person who could be construed as an actual pure good hero (Night Owl), and he doesn't even make out very well.
Is Hollywood going to have you rooting for a bonafide nutjob (Rorshach)? Nope. They'll screw it up instead.
Yourself @ May 9th 2008 2:50AM
Ozymandias already looks like some kind of retarded super-villain.
The biggest issue IMO is going to be the Tales of the Black Freighter. Not only will it not have the same effect as a "comic book in a comic book," it will simply be impossible to execute effectively. Will they leave it out? I can see that happening, especially considering that Watchmen is already much to long to be a 2 hour film.
why not the LS2LS7? @ May 9th 2008 2:58AM
They'll leave the Black Freighter tales out. And BTW, the first time I read Watchmen I skipped that stuff thinking it was useless. Of course, I got to the end and wondered what it was all about. Rereading it with the pirate comics sections made all the difference in the world.
The project is doomed. It's the next LXG.
Worst Review Ever @ May 8th 2008 11:46PM
Can Ewan McGregor star as Atlus?
Yuccadude @ May 9th 2008 4:52PM
God yes! Obi-Wan would make the best Atlas...
Purple Haze @ May 8th 2008 11:48PM
I can't wait to hear what Ken Levine has to say about this.
Lone Starr @ May 8th 2008 11:48PM
Sounds good.
My only question is that would they kindly skip the main story line and focus on the vignettes of sorts? I want to see oodles of Sander Cohen and Dr. Steinman.
FOXHOUND @ May 8th 2008 11:52PM
As long as Big Daddy doesn't cry, box the main character, or even mention any kind of 'red queen', I'll be happy.
Of course, I'd be happier getting the digits of that lady depicted. She's ain't ugly! :d
John McPoop @ May 8th 2008 11:56PM
Yeah she is def not ugly ... Unique ... I like the classy shoulder tats ... Those aint the only tatties I like ... Amirite? Amirite?
Ah well ... I fail
xGeneral DEATHx @ May 9th 2008 7:38AM
You know, I thought the same thing...we fail as a team.
John @ May 9th 2008 11:43AM
i totally agree ;-)
xxx!
343 Guilty Fart @ May 9th 2008 1:23PM
Wow, can't believe I had to scroll this far through the comments till I found a reference to the girl. I'd take her to an underwater New Year's party fo' sho.
Momo @ May 11th 2008 6:49PM
That lady is Bioshock's Art Director Scott Sinclair's wife!
John McPoop @ May 8th 2008 11:54PM
Didn't Levine say the key to his game success was the lack of an actual story. If I remember correct he attributed the success of Bioshock to the tidbits of recording found throughout the game that kept the narrative moving & the environment. I liked how Bioshock didn't have a lot of long cut scenes. It kept the game moving. I doubt this will translate into a great movie but I will surely want to watch it.
alan @ May 9th 2008 12:00AM
WOOT This might actually be a good video game to movie adaptation with Gore helming it I don't have worries that they won't nail the atmosphere of the game but let's hope they don't pull a street fighter with the story and go all crazy they need to steer this in the way of a haunted atlantis lol wouldn't this suck if it just came out to be nothing more then jaws 3 with little girls.
why not the LS2LS7? @ May 9th 2008 12:00AM
There's very little story there. I can't understand the obsession. The game has a very basic plot that all unfolded before your character even showed up. All the rest of the "story" people talk about it really just a collection of racial stereotypes and over-the-top accents. You care more about the robotic guns in Portal than you do about any of the characters in BioShock, including your own.
It's gonna take a lot of rewriting to make a movie out of this, and for what?
Shmil @ May 9th 2008 12:13AM
Well they haven't specified the story of the movie, for all we know it could be the fall of Rapture as Fontaine disrupts the society.
why not the LS2LS7? @ May 9th 2008 12:19AM
Right. I agree. Which is why I ask why bother?
It likely won't be the same story, it'll be a different one. So why buy the license? You're telling an all new story anyway, just changes the names a bit and have it end up in a slightly different place and save the money on the license to buy more good writing.
Yourself @ May 9th 2008 1:41AM
This is what I pointed out above. It's not that the story is bad or absent, it's just told in a very non-cinematic fashion. How can you translate listening to audio journals into a scene in a film? You can't, so you replace it with something else. And at that point, exactly as you said, there's no point calling it BioShock anymore.
As to why they do it... are you serious? $$$ look familiar to you?
why not the LS2LS7? @ May 9th 2008 2:32AM
$$$... good point. Except I don't think the built-in audience amounts to peanuts. If every person who really loved the game bought a ticket, that'd be $30M, which isn't even a good opening weekend.
Then again, the same theory I espouse says why bother making Pirates? And Pirates 1,2,3 made a buttload of money, well enough to make picking up the license worthwhile.
Kujel @ May 9th 2008 12:11AM
The problem is it wasn't all that good a story, I found Mass Effect far better, Assassin's Creed too for that matter, now don't get me wrong it wasn't the worst plot by far but it wasn't a fucking god sent either. The game play on the other hand was pretty good so I'll pass on a Bioshock film.
why not the LS2LS7? @ May 9th 2008 12:19AM
Agreed. Although in practice, playing Assassin's Creed was awfully tedious. But as a basis for a movie, it's probably a little better than BioShock.
Kujel @ May 9th 2008 1:27AM
I enjoyed the game play in Assassin's Creed very much and the story was pretty cool on top of that.
Lewis @ May 9th 2008 12:26AM
blahblahblah.
Make the movie already, then we'll judge your talent, Gore.
zkey14 @ May 9th 2008 12:27AM
Didn't read comments above mine, gonna say it anyway if you think games classify for the 'higher arts crew' it's only because you quietly fantasize about being Levine's little pet.
Sad thing is, you already are.
BTW System Shock 2 is far superior to Bioshock. I'm telling you this. Cheers.
why not the LS2LS7? @ May 9th 2008 3:00AM
As a game, and as a game story, System Shock 2 is far better. But as we discuss above, they'll make the BioShock movie from a part of the story that wasn't even really used much in the game. And that part of the backstory is better fodder for a movie than the hacking/AI story in System Shock 2.
Dave K @ May 9th 2008 12:39AM
This movie will be good, if the writer can re-write the story, so that your following a person WHILE the revolution is happening, not the story depicted in the game.
The story in the game is good, but would only work in a game, it would be too easy for the movie to be boring if you follow someone around while they listen to tape recordings.
Ranus Studios @ May 9th 2008 12:49AM
I'm filled with a number of powerful emotions.
One is worry; BioShock seems way too complex to shove into a single movie.
Another is hope; if anyone can do it right, it's Gore Verbinski. The Ring was creepy, and Pirates was... oceanic.
The last one is unbridled giddiness, because I'm just a huge BioShock whore.
A leftover emotion can be summed up as "just saying;" System Shock 2 would work much better as a movie.
Ranus Studios @ May 9th 2008 12:54AM
Oh, and I'm also pleased to see that Gore has actually played the game.
I'm sure someone else could do it well, but right now he's the only one I can think of.
Nicholas Muldoon @ May 9th 2008 12:52AM
Gore Verbinski isn't the best director ever but he's not bad either so I'll reserve judgement and he does seem to have a genuine enthusiasm and knowledge of the content he's dealing with. I like the idea of the screenwriter of The Aviator working on it, he has a very keen sense of the way of speaking from that time and creates good epic setpieces for suspense or action. Now I'm hoping they can get a crew of good actors in by pitching with the screenplay and not the fact that it's based on a game.
why not the LS2LS7? @ May 9th 2008 12:59AM
Yeah. Good part: he directed Pirates 1. Bad part: he directed Pirates 2 & 3.
This puts him below the level of the Wachowskis who at least had Bound as an additional redeeming factor.
why not the LS2LS7? @ May 9th 2008 1:01AM
Oh yeah, and I forgot another minus for the Wachowskis. Speed Racer.