The long-awaited film adaptation of the acclaimed video game franchise BioShock is coming to Netflix, Deadline reports. The streamer is partnering with Take-Two Interactive and 2K to produce the film, which currently has neither a director nor a cast attached, but is expected to spawn a “cinematic universe.”
The first BioShock game debuted in 2007, and has spawned two main sequels. A fourth title is currently in the works. The retro-futuristic games combine first-person shooter and RPG elements, and are set in fictional ruined landscapes. While the first and second games were set in the underwater city of Rapture in the year 1960, the third game—BioShock: Infinite—was set in the year 1912, in the airborne city of Columbia.
Created by Ken Levine, the series borrows ideas from thinkers and writers such as Ayn Rand, Aldous Huxley and George Orwell, and tackles themes like American exceptionalism and utopia. Combined, the games have sold nearly 40 million copies, making BioShock one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time.
A film adaptation came very close to happening in 2008, with Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski signing on to direct a script by John Logan. In a chat with Collider last year, Verbinski spoke about how the studio balked when confronted by the tone and the potential cost of the project. He said:
“You couldn’t bring that thing to a point. There was a lot of diffusion. So, when the movie was shut down, it was literally the conversation that I had. The brutally honest conversation I had saying, don’t buy the rights, I just want you to be clear. This is a 200-million, R-rated [movie]. We were now about to start shooting a $200 million R-rated movie and they chickened out. I think, ‘Watchmen’ had just come out right before that or something. So, there was a little bit of, these movies need to be PG-13. If they cost that much, they need to be PG-13.”
The movie was later set up with director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, with Verbinski producing, but that project fell apart as well.
Video game adaptations have had a notorious history. The genre is widely believed to be cursed, with at least five high-profile failures for every Resident Evil-style success story. These include director Justin Kurzel’s Assassin’s Creed, Mike Newell’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and the Mark Wahlberg-starrer Max Payne. A big-budget Warcraft movie made over $400 million worldwide but that apparently wasn’t enough to guarantee a sequel.
There has been a slight change in fortune for video game movies in recent years, with Sonic the Hedgehog doing well enough with fans and general audiences to warrant a sequel (which is coming this year, by the way). Follow-ups to last year’s Mortal Kombat movie and 2018’s Tomb Raider reboot have also been set in motion. Not to mention the long-in-the-making Uncharted adaptation that is headed to theaters this Friday. Adaptations of the Borderlands series, Ghosts of Tsushima, The Last of Us and Metal Gear Solid are also in the works.
Netflix’s biggest video game-related hit is probably The Witcher, the hit fantasy series starring Henry Cavill that recently debuted a second season. A third season and a prequel spinoff series are in the works.
The BioShock movie will be produced by 2K, with Roy Lee and Doug Davison’s Vertigo Entertainment. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
via Collider