It was eleven months ago that Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, the 28 Weeks Later director, took over helming duties for a Bioshock film with Gore Verbinski still bringing his larger than life producing to the project. That means that in one month, we’ll have gone a full year without any serious movement on bringing the video game adaptation to life on the big screen. That also means that it’s about that time for someone with big guns to be talking about it again – and Verbinski is still talking a vaguely strong game about delivering for the fans.
According to an interview he did with IGN, they are working on trimming the budget so that it can still stay true to the source material and the scope of what he wants without breaking the bank.
The money quote here:
The problem with BioShock was: R-rated movie, underwater, horror. It’s a really expensive R-rated movie.”
Those are some steep hurdles to overcome in a studio world that’s frightened of its own shadow (if its shadow wasn’t also a popular toy or movie franchise in the 80s). Even Warners is at a point where the R-rating might seem more like a kiss of death than a stamp of approval and Bioshock is set up at Universal who absolutely might not want to spend anything more than $3.50 on a film where horror, underwater, and R-rating all collide.
On the other side of the coin, I have to assume that fans of the game (of which there are millions) might be on the fence. The damned thing was raved as a perfect game, but Hollywood has a terrible track record of video game adaptations, and Verbinski just delivered a piss-poor first impression with Prince of Persia. He claims that its low level of success won’t stop or stall Bioshock, but maybe it should.
What do you think?