Take-Two has entered a partnership with Universal Studios to make a BioShock movie, and Gore Verbinski has been tapped to direct it.
"I was hanging out a lot with Ken Levine talking about gaming in general and I heard from Ken directly that they were thinking about making a movie," Verbinski told Variety.
"Of all the games out there, I think 'Bioshock' is the one that's the most engaging. I think the whole utopia-gone-wrong story that's cleverly unveiled to players is brimming with cinematic potential."
Verbinski stated that he sees BioShock on the scale of Blade Runner rather than Pirates of the Caribbean, so don't expect something like the overblown antics of Jack Sparrow to be featured in the movie.
Instead, he's focusing the Utopian visuals and the theme of free will. He also confirmed that he's in talks with Ken Levine and his top priority is not to damage the franchise with the adaptation.
The Hollywood man has increasingly expressed an interest in games development over the past few months. Speaking to the LA Times in March he called the games development model broken and that he was interested in developing emotional games.
In addition to directing BioShock, Verbinski intends to continue pursuing his own gaming projects on the side.
This won't work. I didn't like the game that much, but what I did like was the immersion in the world. Unless he plans to film this from a characters perspective it will fail.
The game is a long journey through the eyes of the main character with things unravelling slowly, this will be jumping between scenes and it will ruin the atmosphere and the surprises.
Video game movies are almost always rubbish, so I don't hold much hope!
Bioshock's narrative worked well as a video game. It was built around that framework, and the way the story was told was developed to keep the player moving along - you learnt huge chunks in audio diaries, etc. Video games are different to movies, so I'm not sure if it will translate very well. I'm not saying it can't work, though.
Bioshock's very intellectual with its political themes, and quite controversial with some of the subject matter. They'll probably just turn it into a straight action flick and make Tenenbaum his busty sidekick.
I understand most peoples reservations here but I am a bit of an optimst and do think that Bioshock could be that rare thing, a great game and a (great) movie.
I understand most peoples reservations here but I am a bit of an optimst and do think that Bioshock could be that rare thing, a great game and a (great) movie.
And to add to that, sounds like Gore is looking at this in at least partially the right way...
Gore can't do dark films, look at his pathetic attempt at making The Ring scary... He's good at light hearted nonsence but Bioshock? You need a director with vision for that...
BioShock's plot is heavy influenced by a book (Atlas Shrugged), and also shares similarities with things like 1984, Logan's Run, and the aforementioned Bladrunner, so I hold higher hopes for a BioShock film than I would most other game franchises.
(Movies based on books have a considerably stronger likelihood of being good than movies based on games. Though the upcoming adaptation of Atlas Shrugged itself will allegedly star Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, so I don't exactly hold much hope for THAT .)
Gore can't do dark films, look at his pathetic attempt at making The Ring scary... He's good at light hearted nonsence but Bioshock? You need a director with vision for that...
s**t! I'd forgotten about that. It's going to be awful. Why can't a really good director get fired up about games? Someone like David Fincher or Brad Anderson? That I'd pay to see.
Well, if they can't make a decent film out of Bioshock, they can't make a decent film out of any game. If this turns out to be s**t, it will prove once & for all that Hollywood is incapable of successfully adapting games to movies.
First of all, I'd say that game/movie translations are usually bad because people expect the film to stick to the game very closely. This is not always possible; particularly when you have upward of 20 hours of gameplay to wedge into less than 2 hours. In that respect you're always going to be disappointed.
Secondly, its probably not always the fault of those that originally envisioned the film version. I imagine if you asked David Lynch to make a Bioshock film you'd get one hell of a weird and creepy experience. But sadly its Hollywood hacks who usually direct and/or script these kinds of films, and are willing to change anything on the studios' say-so.
I swear you'll never get a AAA film out of a AAA game as long as the films are being produced by major studios. Why? Because the major studios play it even safer than the major software developers do. As games strive ever more to introduce emotional content, Hollywood seems increasingly happy to tone down all but the most visceral elements of entertainment. This is probably why the intense psychological effects of playing something like Resident Evil were ignored and ultimately reduced to slightly cheesey action slasher nonsense.
I have already read 3 topics in various forums within CVG today a lone telling me about this. So another one.
It's going to suck, lets look at why.
1) Its a game to movie tie in - they rarely ever work. 2) It has child abuse in it (harvesting little sisters) - that will be completely removed and the main character will either ignore them or 'save' them. 3) There will either be a love interest or an annoying woman in the front line. 4) 1 for the racists among us - I never noticed any black people in rapture, all movies at the moment have a token black guy 5) The characters in the game were interesting and some even had depth, but it took the listening of the diaries and a good few hours of gameplay to figure that out, that can't be compressed into a 2 hour movie. 6) Gamers know what happens, so will it look at it from another point of view trying to tell the same thing, or happen at another point in time (ie before the game, like Bioshock 2)
I'm sorry but I just can't see it being any good. I guess it will depend on who is writting it and who is acting it, when that list is released we will know more, but I strongly doubt I will pay to see it.
There is no way they can pull this off and make a decent movie. I cant wait to see how the hollywood suits screw this up...Jean claude van damn in the title role
Jesus, everyone's a pessimist aren't they? There's every chance this could actually be good. Yeah the bioshock story worked well in a game context. That doesn't mean they have to follow the game to the letter whilst making the film. It might be very entertaining, but I think I'll reserve my judgement until I've seen it, rather than now when it hasn't even begun production.
Pirates 1 was really good, 2 was merely okay, but 3 was really disappointing, imo. Although the main reason for that was they ended up with too many characters, then focused on the wrong one (ie, it should have been a Jack Sparrow movie, but he was hardly in it). Hopefully that wouldn't be a problem with Bioshock.
Somehow though I can't see them doing plasmids justice, and for me, the plasmids were a huge part of what made Bioshock interesting and most importantly, unique. Without plasmids Bioshock would have been just another shooter, and also without them, this will be just another action film. I hope I'm wrong, but they just feel like a 'game' thing, and not a 'film' thing.
As others have said, if they can't make a decent movie out of this game then there is no hope for any game/film conversion.
In some respects though I hope they don't try and ape the narrative of the game too closely. Take the great world design, the political themes, the moral ambiguity, and the dense atmosphere, but then make those aspects work in a film setting. In other words, use the game as an influence and starting point but not as a bible. If that means devising new characters or even working from a radically different perspective or timeline then so be it.
And please god, no gimmicks like the first person stuff in Doom...
This could be the first decent game movie. Gore Verbinsky is a competent mainstream director and probably the first non-hack to be hired for such a job.
We've had Paul Anderson, Uwe Boll, Christophe Ganz etc, and they are all Direct-To-Video amateurs at best. Well, maybe Anderson does have SOME talent, but he's still a hack.
Fact is, almost all of these movies are made by C-list people who seem to think that gamers just want a literal translation of the videogame (that includes the lack of substance), instead of a proper movie. So what get is a lot of infantile crap that panders to the ADD-crowd.
Gore Verbinsky is someone who might be able to finally break this trend.
Gore Verbinski couldn't direct his way out of a paper bag.
Bit rich of him to claim that games need more emotional content; his films are nothing but ineptly thrown-together reels of cgi-dominated schlock and rudderless performances.
Prepare for withering, ignorant reviews along the lines of "even a supposedly half-decent video game can't make the transition to the big screen."
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