More Than Money Killed BioShock Movie
The BioShock movie is now sadly counted among the projects stuck in limbo, even though it was supposed to be made, as confirmed by its would-be director, Gore Verbinski. The creator explained what went wrong.
- Gore Verbinski wanted $200 million to produce a BioShock movie, which terrified Universal;
- The studio also refused to allow an R-rated film to be made - they were hoping for PG-13.
Gore Verbinski, a director best known for his work on the Pirates of the Caribbean series, was at one point supposed to be in charge of a movie adaptation of the popular action game BioShock. Unfortunately, the project fell apart at some point for several reasons. Collider interviewed the filmmaker, who shared some behind-the-scenes details about the ill-fated adaptation:
"It was talked about as one movie. And it was strange, my first meeting at Universal on BioShockwas sitting in a room and saying, 'Hey guys, this is a $200 million R rated movie.' And it was silent.I remember my agent going, 'Why did you say that?' I'm like because it is. Why just even trying to kill a movie you haven't even started? That's before getting scripted before anything. I'm just I just want to be clear. And I think everybody at the studio was well, yeah, okay, maybe. Wow, no. It's big, we know."
Verbinski pointed out later in the interview that it wasn't just the high production costs that made Universal, as he nicely put it, chicken out. The studio was also reluctant to allow the film to be made as R-rated movied, the same category as Deadpool and Logan. The company wanted to force Verbinski to create a PG-13 work for teens. For something like this, the director simply could not agree.
One of the things Verbinski blamed for the state of affairs was Zack Snyder's Watchmen, released in 2009. It was around that time when the film adaptation of BioShock was being worked on and, seeing the success of the aforementioned superhero film in the PG-13 category, it was decided that there was no point in trying to make a movie with the category, as it would simply sell worse. Maybe it's a good thing that the film wasn't made on Universal's terms and on the cheap. At least today we don't associate the BioShock franchise with another poor adaptation of a video game, and maybe in the future we will see a worthy cinematic interpretation of the series.
