Netflix has officially confirmed there is a Bioshock movie in the works. The news comes via an announcement on Twitter after reports have leaked that the company has optioned both Bioshock and GRIS for future projects. Not much is known about the upcoming film besides Netflix simply saying, “Netflix, 2K, and Take-Two Interactive are partnering to produce a film adaptation of the renowned video game franchise BioShock.”
Before the Netflix announcement, Twitter account @Supererogatory had previously posted images of US Copyright Office records showing the company has plans to adapt both Bioshock and GRIS. The leaker said on the subject, “Went down a rabbit hole of looking up US Copyright Office records and discovered Netflix is developing adaptations of (or at least optioned the rights to) BioShock and GRIS.” While there is no confirmation from Netflix on a GRIS project, it is most likely happening in the future.
The timing of the announcement was strange as it was so soon after the leak that Supererogatory said, “No idea if this is a coincidence wrt timing or I just got them to announce this, but seems like Netflix uses a custom Twitter client for most of this account’s tweets and they used the regular Twitter site for this one.” The US Copyright Office records appear to show that Netflix has optioned Bioshock, Bioshock 2, Bioshock Infinite, and the book based on the franchise, Bioshock Rapture.
This is not the first time that film producers have attempted to adapt Bioshock. A movie based on the franchise was well into pre-production in 2009 at Universal with Gore Verbinski directing. However, the studio shut it down over creative differences when they drastically shrunk the budget, wanting the film to be family-friendly when Verbinski’s vision was rated R. Verbinksi said on the project, “We were eight weeks prior shooting when the plug was pulled. It’s an R-rated movie. I wanted to keep it R-rated, I felt like that would be appropriate, and it’s an expensive movie. It’s a massive world we’re creating and it’s not a world we can simply go to locations to shoot.”
Hopefully, this Bioshock movie will reach completion and be something that pleases fans of the series.
