Gore Verbinski talks cancelled Bioshock movie

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

Gore Verbinski is one hell of a director. Funny story, he started off by creating those Budweiser frogs from back in the day. A genius mind at work, no? Yes. He was and is. 

Verbinski then moved on to the fun, but ultimately forgettable kiddie-flick MOUSE HUNT. Then the even more forgettable Brad Pitt Julie Roberts romantic-thriller (hey points for trying) THE MEXICAN. After that he hit it big with one of the best (visually) directed horror flicks of all-time, THE RING. 

Then, Gore (what a pimp name) was off to the multi-million dollar races with the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN franchise, where he directed the first three flicks.

From there it seemed – and this weekend's A CURE FOR WELLNESS all but confirms this – Gore wanted to get back to horror. But he wanted to do it with a budget. Thus making him my fuc*ing hero. When is the last time we got an EPIC horror film? The answer is 1992 with Francis Ford Coppola's DRACULA. That's when. We are long overdo.

Turns out Gore then set his sights on shooting a big-budget feature based on the (at the time) widely successful video game BIOSHOCK. I have not played the game, but have sat on many a couch back in the day and watched others play so I consider myself an expert (sarcasm power, go).

Anyways the project ultimately didn't go anywhere and was left at the bottom of the seas. What happened to the flick? Well there is one man who might know. Gore took to an AMA on Reddit for A CURE FOR WELLNESS and dropped a few tidbits on what happened to the BIOSHOCK flick.

Read and weep below:

Well it's no short answer to that question but we were eight weeks prior shooting when the plug was pulled. It's an R rated movie. I wanted to keep it R rated, I felt like that would be appropriate, and it's an expensive movie. It's a massive world we're creating and it's not a world we can simply go to locations to shoot. "A Cure For Wellness", we were able to really utilize a variety of location to create the world. "Bioshock" it wouldn't work like that, we'd be building an entire underworld universe. So I think the combination of the price tag and the rating, universal just didn't feel comfortable ultimately.

At that time also there were some R rated, expensive R rated movies that were not working. So I think things have changed and maybe there will be another chance, but it's very difficult when you're eight weeks away from shooting a movie you really can see in your head and you've almost filmed the entire thing, so emotionally you're right at that transition from architect to becoming a contractor and that will be a difficult place to get back to.

Urgh, damn you Universal! I'm kidding… but I'm not. I get why Universal would pull the plug; the flick was set to be MASSIVE and, as I've mentioned before, the rule of thumb with R vs PG-13 rating is that you effectively cut your potential earnings in HALF when you go R instead of PG-13.

Tough choices sometimes.

Of course, sometimes I wish Hollywood would just shut up and spend millions and millions on an R-rated video game adaptation and throw caution to the wind but then I think of DOOM, HITMAN, and ALONE IN THE DARK and I go, "oh, right. Maybe Hollywood knows when to cut their losses."

But we'll never know if BIOSHOCK was meant to be the video game adaptation that finally proved the formula could work… too bad.