More than 10 years ago, Bioshock fans rubbed our hands with what was planned to be a faithful adaptation of the plot. The mere idea of seeing the scenarios of the first game and some of its most famous sections would have been worth it by now, but that ultimately came to nothing .
With the support of Ken Levine , creator of the game, a Gore Verbinski who had come to burst the rooms with Pirates of the Caribbean had everything in his face to get down to work, but a few weeks after filming began, the studios shelved the project .
“It was weird, in my first meeting with Universal about Bioshock I was sitting in a room and saying, ‘Guys, this is a $ 200 million R-rated movie.’ And there was silence.
I remember my agent saying “why do you say that?” And I was, well, because it is. Why try to kill a movie before you start? That was before having a script, first of all. I just wanted to make it clear, and I think everyone was like: well, yeah, ok, maybe. Wow, no. It’s big, we already know. “
The fact is that, as Verbinski himself recounted in a recent interview, that was precisely what ended up happening. From Universal it took longer than necessary to assimilate the cost of creating scenarios that had no real location in which to save on production, and even less that the return on this expense would be lower due to the need for a rating by higher ages.
“We were about to start shooting a $ 200 million R movie and they were cowering. I think Watchmen had just come out a little earlier, so there was a little bit of ‘these movies have to be for over 13s.’ It has to be for people over 13.
(…) Do you want to do it? I said, and there was silence in a room filled with 30 executives, marketing people, everyone. I’m trying to do this, so don’t waste people’s time if you’re not willing to do it. “
And it was not done. The project continued to lurch through Hollywood for a good season and there were even other directors like Guillermo del Toro who took an interest in it, but today the possibility of seeing Rapture on a movie screen is the most remote. A pity, because it is precisely the type of story that would be useful to air today.