Filmmaker Francis Lawrence (“Constantine,” “The Long Walk”) has been attached to the film adaptation of the “BioShock” video game franchise for years now.
His commitment to helming the various sequels and prequels in “The Hunger Games” franchise has kept him busy, but “BioShock” remains his dream project.
Producer Roy Lee indicated Lawrence was previously hoping to make it his next film after “The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping” opens next month. At last report, Michael Green and Justin Rhodes were penning the script for the film.
In a new interview with The Direct, Lawrence says he remains optimistic it’ll happen, but there’s a whole lot of challenges that remain:
“I hope so. You know, it’s tricky on a couple fronts. I’m definitely active in it. We are still working on it. It is a tough nut to crack that world and that story, especially because you are the character when you play the game, and so creating that character from scratch into that world that quite honestly, is pretty bats— in a most amazing way. It’s tricky. So we’re getting there, and we’re getting close, which is great.
I would love nothing more than to be able to make that movie. So still working on it. And then, you have also just the Netflix of it all because Netflix right now has had regime changes and just all of that kind of nonsense that I don’t like to have to deal with or have to. So we’ll see. Hopefully we’ll figure it out.”
First released in 2007, the first two games were set in the 1960s in the Art Deco stylings of the undersea city of Rapture – a fallen scientific objectivist utopia consumed years before by its own ambitions and lack of morality and regulation. It is now the dominion of crazed genetic experiments. The franchise has sold more than 39 million copies worldwide across its three titles and their various editions and collections.
The likes of Gore Verbinski and Guillermo del Toro have previously been linked to the film during its development, with the dark (likely R-rated tone) combined with the costly expense of what would be elaborate sets factored in.
