Bioshock movie strapped for funding
When it was announced back in 2008 that Hollywood could be making a full representation of Bioshock to the big screen, fans of the series were sure to be buzzing.
The director who was thought to take the project on (Gore Verbinski) was behind the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. It was believed Verbinski had a great vision for what he wanted to produce and finally create a worthy movie adaptation of a popular videogame.
The dream bubble soon burst a year later, as reports surfaced of budgetary concerns. It was announced by Variety that the $160 million budget was being revisited by Universal. Again in June 2009 in an interview with Verbinski he told The Los Angeles Times “The bottom line is it has to shoot out of the States for budget reasons and my schedule may be prohibitive”. “There’s a great script and a really interesting cast. It really comes down to the financial model now. Big movies are just not being shot in the States”.
Now it has been announced Verbinski has abandoned the project altogether. He explained “I couldn’t really get past anybody that would spend the money that it would take to do it and keep an ‘R’ rating,” he said of the big-screen version of the M for Mature-rated game. “Alternately, I wasn’t really interested in pursuing a ‘PG-13′ version, because the ‘R’ rating is inherent–Little Sisters and injections and the whole thing. I just wanted to really, really make it a movie where, four days later, you’re still shivering and going, ‘Jesus Christ!’ … It’s a movie that has to be really, really scary, but you also have to create a whole underwater world, so the price tag is high. We just didn’t have any takers on an ‘R’-rated movie with that price tag.”
Fans of the series are sure to be bummed by the news however this was the best decision to make than create a disposable movie.
