Hollywood has been attempting to bring Bioshock to the big screen for quite some time, with the latest incarnation set to be directed by Francis Lawrence and written by Michael Green for Netflix. The WGA strike halted development, but now that the strike is over, Michael Green provided an update on the Bioshock movie while speaking with Collider.
“You have to measure your words, or you’ll start to see a laser pointer at my forehead from the Netflix legal,” Michael Green teased. “Netflix has been amazing about it. They were excited about it before the strike, they’re excited about it now, post-strike. Yes, I got called, the, ‘How’s it coming along?’ the minute the strike was over, ‘You about ready…?’ Been meeting regularly with Francis Lawrence and his team to refine a draft to go back in. We’re all optimistic. We all love it. It’s a great big sprawling nightmare world we wanna see real. So, here’s hoping. I would love to have an update for you soon.“
The first Bioshock game takes place in 1960 and follows Jack as he explores the underwater city of Rapture. This former utopia fell into decline after the discovery of ADAM, a genetic material which grants superhuman powers. Francis Lawrence spoke about the Bioshock movie last year, explaining what he loved about the video game.
I think it’s one of the best games ever created. It’s also, I think, one of the most visually unique games ever created. The other thing, and one of the things that always appeals to me, is it is very thematic. There’s real ideas and philosophies underneath the game property, and it’s really, really, really thought out.
Lawrence continued, “A lot of games may have a great world of some kind, or they may have a great lead character, or they may tee you up for great set-pieces, but they don’t really have the ideas, they don’t have the kind of weight and the gravitas that BioShock does. The sort of combo of real ideas and philosophies mixed with the unbelievable aesthetic of it. Plus, one of the other things that I love, love, love is that sort of strange mashup of genre, the idea that you have what feels like a period piece, mixed with body horror, mixed with sci-fi. It’s one of those great mashups, and I think it can be really unique and really beautiful and really entertaining.”
The first Bioshock movie project was announced back in 2008 and was set to be directed by Gore Verbinski and written by John Logan. Verbinski dropped out several years afterwards, and the project was later shelved.