At long last, Netflix has found the director and writer for their upcoming film adaptation of the iconic 2007 video game BioShock. Hunger Games franchise director Francis Lawrence will be serving as director on the film with Michael Green, co-writer of 2017's Logan and Blade Runner 2049, set to pen the screenplay. The report of the two joining the project comes from Deadline and is news that fans have long been waiting for. It was first announced that Netflix planned to adapt the popular video game back in February 2022 and the streaming service would be partnering with Take-Two Interactive and its game publisher subsidiary, 2K, though at the time there was no word on who would be attached to the project.
Lawrence is an understandable pick to direct an adaptation, as he has proven his ability to transition stories from a given medium to film as the director of the Hunger Games franchise. He is currently in production on the upcoming prequel film, Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, where he once again serves as director. Green has previously worked as a writer on James Mangold's Logan, which went on to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and Denis Villeneuve's Oscar-Winning film Blade Runner 2049. Deadline is also reporting that with Lawrence still filming Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Green will adapt the game into a script and the team will jump right into pre-production when Lawrence's prequel film wraps. Roy Lee will serve as a producer of the movie via his Vertigo Entertainment along with Lawrence. Executive producers are Cameron MacConomy and Strauss Zelnick for Take-Two.
The original BioShock released in 2007 and was developed by Irrational Games and directed by Ken Levine with 2K Games acting as publisher. Both it and its 2010 sequel, BioShock 2, take place in 1960 in the underwater city turned dystopia of Rapture, and sees players trying to survive against the crazed citizens using a variety of powers and weapons. The third entry in the series, 2013's BioShock Infinite, took players to the airborne city of Columbia. This is not the first time that a film adaptation for the series has tried to get off the ground, with there being plans all the way back in 2008 that involved Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski signing on to direct a script by John Logan. When those plans fell through, a movie with director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo stepping behind the camera with Verbinski producing was in the works, but that project fell apart as well.
This is just the latest in the long list of video game adaptations that have been hitting theaters in the last few years, along with a growing list that are set to arrive in the future. Netflix has had several adaptations of video games, both animated and live-action, with the former including projects like the recently released Tekken: Bloodline as well as critically acclaimed series like Castlevania and Arcane. The streaming service also has the recent Resident Evil series as well as the Henry Cavill-starring The Witcher series, which is currently in production of its third season.
These recent video game adaptations even go beyond Netflix and include the massive success seen in both of Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog films that were released in 2020 and 2022, respectively. This has led to Sega voicing their plan to adapt even more of the IPs into film and TV series. Sony has also shown their plan to turn their major PlayStation titles into movies and series, with the likes of the 2022 adaptation of Naughty Dog's Uncharted series starring Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg, as well as the upcoming HBO Max adaptation of fellow Naughty Dog title The Last of Us, starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. These are all a part of a strategy revealed by the company back in May 2021 that included them making at least 10 adaptations of their games for TV and film, including a Ghost of Tsushima film by John Wick director Chad Stahelski and a Twisted Metal series at Peacock, with more projects yet to be announced.
The BioShock film is still in pre-production with no release date or window currently announced. Stay tuned to Collider for updates on the streaming service's upcoming film adaptation of the popular video game franchise.