Why Did The BioShock Movie Stall?

With top Director Gore Verbinski at the helm, some believed that the BioShock movie adaptation may have been the first to actually serve its source material well. He’d been responsible for creating the solid schlock remake The Ring and created a bonafide franchise in Pirates of the Caribbean. So where did it all go wrong?

Well according to Verbinski himself, funding was the issue – no-one wanted to spend the money required to do the world of Rapture justice.

I couldn’t really get past anybody that would spend the money that it would take to do it and keep an R rating,” explained Verbinski. “Alternately, I wasn’t really interested in pursuing a PG-13 version. Because the R rating is inherent. Little Sisters and injections and the whole thing. I just wanted to really, really make it a movie where, four days later, you’re still shivering and going, “Jesus Christ!”… It’s a movie that has to be really, really scary, but you also have to create a whole underwater world, so the pricetag is high. We just didn’t have any takers on an R-rated movie with that pricetag.

It’s such a shame – but maybe the studios were right? Would a Bioshock movie, based on what was inherently a niche gamers’ game, really have pushed through to the mainstream audience required of a big budget feature? It would have been risky. That said, we really wish someone had taken that risk.

Exclusive: Gore Verbinski Talks The Lone Ranger and More [Coming Soon]


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