Hollywood has been in love with trying to adapt beloved video games for, well, ever. At least since games stopped being about 8-bit figures and starting incorporating narratives and epic storytelling into them. However, it's not been as good as the writers of those games at making them compelling, to say the least. Not for a lack of trying, though. But one of the biggest and best video games ever made has remained frustratingly difficult to crack, although it's getting closer.
Netflix's long-awaited BioShock movie is getting closer to becoming a reality, according to director Francis Lawrence, who confirmed that he's still actively working on the adaptation. Speaking exclusively with The Direct while promoting The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, Lawrence explained that the project is making progress, although adapting the game's unusual world has proven more complicated than expected.
"I hope so. You know, it's tricky on a couple fronts. We're — I'm definitely active in it. We are still working on it. It is a tough nut to crack that world and that story, especially because it's... I mean, you are the character when you play the game, and so creating that character from scratch into that world that, you know, quite honestly, is pretty batshit in a most amazing way. It's tricky. So we're getting there, and we're getting close, which is great."
The game sees players inhabit the silent protagonist of Jack as they explore the undersea city of Rapture, a haven for society's greatest minds that has devolved into a dystopian nightmare wrought by one man's hubris. Amidst the waterlogged ruins, a new ecosystem has emerged, where deranged Splicers hunt down the Little Sisters who would be helpless without their hulking Big Daddy guardians. Your only hopes for survival are quick thinking, reclaimed weaponry, and superhuman powers granted by DNA-altering Plasmids. To defeat Rapture's mutated monsters, you must become one.
What's Taking Netflix's BioShock Movie So Long?
Lawrence explained that the adaptation faces another challenge beyond the screenplay, with changes behind the scenes at Netflix potentially affecting when production can finally begin. However, the filmmaker remains determined to bring the project to the screen.
"And I would love nothing more than to be able to make that movie. So still working on it. And then, you have also just the Netflix of it all because Netflix right now has had regime changes and just all of that kind of nonsense that I don't like to have to deal with or have to. So we'll see. Hopefully we'll figure it out."
The adaptation was first announced by Netflix in 2022, with the streamer partnering with 2K and Take-Two Interactive to bring the video game franchise to life. But this isn't Hollywood's first attempt at making a BioShock movie, with Universal Pictures previously acquiring the rights in 2008 before that version eventually fell apart.
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