Netflix has finally hired a director and a writer for the cinematic version of the critically acclaimed 2007 video game BioShock. Francis Lawrence, director of the Hunger Games films, will be at the helm, while Michael Green, co-writer of Logan and Blade Runner 2049 (2017), will write the script. Deadline broke the story that the two would be joining the project, and it was information that many people had been anticipating for quite some time.
In February 2022, it was revealed that Netflix was teaming up with video game producer Take-Two Interactive and its subsidiary, 2K, to adapt the famous video game, albeit, at the time, there was no information on who would be involved in the adaptation. As the man behind the Hunger Games films, it’s easy to see why Lawrence would be chosen to helm an adaptation. He is presently serving as director once again for the next Hunger Games prequel film, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Green has written for films such as Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049, which won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and James Mangold’s Logan, which was nominated for the same award. According to Deadline, while Lawrence is currently filming The Hunger Games prequel film, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Green will adapt the game into a narrative and the crew will immediately enter into pre-production.
Roy Lee, through his company Vertigo Entertainment, and Lawrence will both act as producers on the film. Cameron MacConomy and Strauss Zelnick are the executive producers for Take-Two. In 2007, 2K Games published the original BioShock, which had been created by Irrational Games under the direction of Ken Levine. Both BioShock and its 2010 sequel, BioShock 2, are set in the dystopian 1960s underwater metropolis of Rapture. Players in both games must use a wide array of abilities and weapons to combat the city’s increasingly violent inhabitants. With 2013’s BioShock Infinite, the franchise reached its third instalment, transporting players to the floating metropolis of Columbia.
A cinematic version of the series has been attempted before, with Pirates of the Caribbean helmer Gore Verbinski attached to direct a script written by John Logan as far back as 2008. After those plans fell through, Verbinski was set to produce a film with Juan Carlos Fresnadillo at the helm, but that film never got made. There has been a steady stream of movies based on video games to theatres over the past few years, and that trend shows no signs of slowing down. Animated and live-action video game adaptations have both appeared on Netflix, with the former encompassing critically praised programmes like Castlevania and Arcane and newer releases like Tekken: Bloodline.
The third season of The Witcher, starring Henry Cavill, is now in development, while the latest instalment of the Resident Evil series is also available on the streaming site. And it’s not only Netflix; Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog movies, which came out in 2020 and 2022, also did quite well thanks to their adaptations of popular video games. Sega has responded by saying they intend to turn more of its intellectual properties into movies and television shows. Sony has demonstrated its intention to adapt its most popular PlayStation games into film and television by announcing the casting of Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg in the upcoming film adaptation of Naughty Dog’s Uncharted series (2022), as well as the casting of Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey in the upcoming HBO Max film adaptation of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us (2019).
The firm announced plans to adapt at least 10 of their games for television and cinema in May 2021; these adaptations include a Ghost of Tsushima feature directed by John Wick’s Chad Stahelski and a Twisted Metal series at Peacock, among others. No official release date or window has been established for the BioShock film, which is still in pre-production.