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THE DARK KNIGHT RISES Set Visit Preview and 4 Awesome New Posters!Gore Verbinski Says BIOSHOCK Movie Still Happening; Will Be a Hard R-Rated Movie
by Matt Goldberg Posted:July 5th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
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Director Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy) still has his tickets booked for Rapture. Although he’ll now be taking the trip as a producer, Verbinski told IGN that an adaptation of the popular videogame BioShock is still in the works with Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (28 Weeks Later) at the helm. The project was put into stasis last year after Universal balked at the $160 million budget, Verbinski focused on his upcoming animated film Rango, and Fresnadillo turned his attention to thriller Intruders starring Clive Owen. However, Verbinski and Fresnadillo haven’t forgotten the project and the question boils down to getting enough money in spite of making a hard-R flick. Hit the jump for what Verbinski had to say about the project.
According to Verbinski, they haven’t figured out a way to get the project to the budget it needs to be at and keep the R-rating:
“We’re working trying to make it. The problem with BioShock was: R-rated movie, underwater, horror. It’s a really expensive R-rated movie, so we’re trying to figure out a way working with [director] Juan Carlos [Fresnadillo] to get the budget down and still keep so it’s true to the core audience, you know? The thing is it has to be R, a hard R.”
I’m glad Verbinski and Fresnadillo want to do it right. Personally, I don’t think a BioShock game will work simply because I believe any film adaptation can’t be more fun than playing the game. That being said, it makes more sense to turn BioShock into a movie than it did to adapt Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Speaking of the recent film and its mediocre box office performance and whether that fate would befall BioShock:
“No, I think BioShock‘s a rare one because it’s actually a great story. Me? I don’t want to make movies based on videogames, but BioShock‘s the one Oedipal, crazy kind of — it’s just got really good bones, and we’re really trying to figure out a way to make it work.”
Clearly, it all comes down to budget, and I can sympathize with that problem. This isn’t a case of figuring out how to make a big, lavish and exciting blockbuster, but a question of logistics and compromise. The look and story of BioShock are there—the question is how a movie can afford to reach that destination.
For those that haven’t played the excellent game, BioShock takes place in the underwater city of Rapture where a man with a mysterious past crash lands and takes refuge only to find that its inhabitants have gone insane through attempts to genetically splice their DNA in order to “perfect” themselves. The game has a lush, art deco design mixed with a 50s iconography, combined with a smart subtext of what would happen if the philosophy of “Objectivism” was taken to its logical conclusion (it’s not a nice place).
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great game, but a movie would have to be done with the utmost care to succeed
I hate to be the naysayer, but I think BioShock will suffer in the transition from game to cinema. BioShock was an experience that was tailor made for the video game medium, take it out of that context and I think you aren't left with a lot to go with.
You have only a single on screen character throughout the vast majority of the story, who has to carry the movie playing off nothing other than setting and a pair of disembodied voices. Many of the better parts of the game were parts that deviated from the main story and sent you off on side errands: Medical Pavilion, Fort Frolic, etc. That is something that works perfectly for a game, but will frustrate audiences at a movie. And finally, they would have to completely re-work the ending in order to keep audiences in their seats for the third act of the film. The third act of BioShock was the weakest part, but it could still fall back on gameplay, there's obviously no gameplay in a movie so there's nothing to save the finale.
This poses a big problem: a change of the caliber that would be required is bound to piss off the fans, but no change will piss off everyone. I'm sorry, but as much as I love BioShock, I don't want to see it in any other medium than video game.
BioShock would be a great movie. They would just have to change a lot of stuff from the game. A LOT. The reason the story in the game works is because you've got a bunch of different people talking directly into your ear as you traverse the city. That sort of exposition would just come across as too simple in a film. So the whole SPOILERS…………………..Fontaine switcheroo plotline would be much more difficult to pull off.
Matt Goldberg wrote:
“…combined with a smart subtext of what would happen if the philosophy of “Objectivism” was taken to its logical conclusion (it’s not a nice place).”
It's logical conclution would be quite different, in fact. The philosophic concepts used in the game are not defined and run counter to the principles of Objectivism. Of course there are similarities, and Ayn Rand would surely support the words upon the banner (pictured above) opposing altruism; however, she would also define her terms and let reason and logic point to the conclusions, making it crystal clear.
The world depicted in BIOSHOCK is more akin to a philosophy of 'irrational self-interest' and a loss of self-esteem on a massive scale. This is what happens if everyone were politicians, not Objectivists.