BioShock director Ken Levine is making an interactive live-action movie based on the ’60s sci-fi TV show The Twilight Zone which was known for the unexpected twists in each episode.
The film will “explore the spaces between movies and games”, Levine told Wired.
In order to make it happen, Levine is working with tech company Interlude and viewers will be able to decide what characters do next.
“Playing my games, you can probably tell Twilight Zone is something I grew up with,” Levine commented. “They speak to a larger truth. They’re morality plays, fables, and often they’re about a character who is going through an experience that’s central to their life but also speaks to a larger part of the human condition. I don’t think [Rod] Serling, at the beginning, set out to be a science-fiction writer. But he found that this is a great medium to do metaphor.”
The Twilight Zone movie is a side project, Levine added, and one only in the early stages of development. He’s still working on his next game at BioShock publisher Take-Two Interactive though details on that title are scarce. In December 2015, Levine said the game would feature a small open world and he was grasping with the possibilities for extending the replayability of narrative games.
Take-Two has not yet officially announced Levine’s next game but it seems a BioShock Collection will be released containing the original BioShock, BioShock 2, and BioShock Infinite. The first BioShock and Infinite were both developed by Levein’s Irrational Games while BioShock 2 was created by 2K Marin.
Levine closed Irrational in February 2014 but the studio reopened later that year with a smaller team.