Here’s Why The Bioshock Movie Never Happened
At one point, director Gore Verbinski was attached to a feature film adaption of the Bioshock video game. Like a lot of these projects, the film was announced to be in production, followed by months of silence and finally quiet acknowledgment of cancellation. You probably didn’t have high hopes for it anyway, given how video game movies usually turn out, but would you like to know why the project was trashed?
Verbinski explained the situation in a Reddit AMA. The Q&A period was mainly meant to promote his new flick A Cure For Wellness, but he was a good sport about going off-topic. He let loose paragraphs on the Bioshock movie.
“I wanted to keep it R-rated; I felt like that would be appropriate, and it’s an expensive movie,” typed Verbinski. “It’s a massive world we’re creating and it’s not a world we can simply go to locations to shoot. [For] A Cure For Wellness, we were able to really utilize a variety of location to create the world. Bioshock wouldn’t work like that; we’d be building an entire underworld universe. So I think the combination of the price tag and the rating, [film company Universal] just didn’t feel comfortable ultimately.”
Verbinski also said that even if the movie were to get back on track tomorrow, his time for being its director has passed. “It’s very difficult when you’re eight weeks away from shooting a movie you really can see in your head and you’ve almost filmed the entire thing,” he said. “So emotionally you’re right at that transition from architect to becoming a contractor and that will be a difficult place to get back to.”