by Victor ‘r0gue’ Vieira
It seems as though video-game movies is quite the ‘in thing’ in Hollywood nowadays. Resident Evil sure started a good trend here and it’s no surprise when you look at just how big the gaming industry is. Gore Verbinski was almost set to be producing the Bioshock movie and he is best known for ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, ‘The Mexican’, and ‘The Ring’.
For those who haven’t played it, ‘BioShock’ follows a man who ends up in the massive undersea city of Rapture after surviving a plane crash in the mid-Atlantic. Rapture is the construct of Andrew Ryan, a utopia-seeking industrialist who created the city to house the world’s greatest artists and thinkers. The discovery of a compound on the ocean floor known as ADAM, which alters the body chemistry to allow for the use of super powers, eventually leads to the decimation of the city’s populace. Our crash survivor arrives soon after things go to crap, since nobody wants to play a video game set in a utopia.
The story is actually quite absorbing for a video game, with some significant twists and an underlying message or two. It’ll be interesting to see exactly what gets turned into a movie here. A straight adaptation of “BioShock” is certainly possible, but the “fall of Rapture” is well-documented in the game and features a wider range of characters to focus on. A script has been around for awhile, from “The Last Samurai” writer John Logan, though it’s reasonable to imagine the budget issues that halted the project forcing some rewrites.
For a brief time last week it was almost not to be for Verbinski after troubles arose and the job was going to the producer of the stunning ’23 Days Later’- Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. “Verbinski opted out of directing because the film has been re-calibrated to shoot aboard (sic) to access tax credits and favorable exchange rates. Verbinski couldn’t do that because he is locked into directing the Paramount animated film ‘Rango,’ with the title character voiced by his ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ cohort Johnny Depp,” reported Variety. Apparently the decision is contingent on the game developer, who has final say.
In the end the vidgame is in the hands of Juan Carlos who is seems like he may be holding off production of the movie to possibly see what happens in the sequel game- Bioshock 2, that will be launched in 10.
