Netflix’s live-action BioShock film adaptation might seem like it’s stuck in limbo, but the director, Francis Lawrence, has come forward to explain that even though translating the game to the silver screen was a tricky affair, it might be one step closer to becoming a reality.
Speaking to The Direct about his upcoming movie The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, Lawrence was asked about his long-gestating BioShock movie, and whether it would be his focus after. “I hope so. You know, it’s tricky on a couple fronts. We’re — I’m definitely active in it. We are still working on it,” he explained. “It is a tough nut to crack that world and that story, especially because it’s… I mean, you are the character when you play the game, and so creating that character from scratch into that world that, you know, quite honestly, is pretty batshit in a most amazing way. It’s tricky. So we’re getting there, and we’re getting close, which is great.”
Of course, the challenges that Lawrence is referring to here are no doubt trying to translate the events of the first game – which producer Roy Lee previously said was the film’s source material – into a more linear movie format. The original 2007 game centred on Jack, its silent protagonist, who finds himself in the underwater city of Rapture after a plane crash, only to find the once-magnificent city in ruins and overrun by deformed madmen known as Splicers. Fans of the game will already know its mind-blowing final twist, with the entire game giving players the illusion that they are in control of their own decisions, so this same twist might not work as well when viewers are watching it happen to someone else on the big screen.
In addition, Lawrence also attributed the BioShock film’s delay to Netflix itself, explaining that the recent major regime changes at the streamer might make things more difficult. “And then, you have also just the Netflix of it all because Netflix right now has had regime changes and just all of that kind of nonsense that I don’t like to have to deal with or have to. So we’ll see. Hopefully we’ll figure it out,” he added.
The BioShock movie adaptation has certainly been a difficult task to take on, as the project has already changed hands a couple of times since Universal acquired franchise rights in 2008. Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean) was initially attached to direct a BioShock adaptation, but plans fell through. Even Guillermo del Toro (Pacific Rim) was in talks to helm a movie, but these never came to fruition either, resulting in Netflix announcing its own adaptation in 2022. Hopefully this time, the world of Rapture might actually make its way to the big screen and bring along with it iconic franchise characters like the Big Daddies and Little Sisters.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
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