Netflix’s New Management Has Slashed The BioShock Film’s Budget

Roy Lee, the producer behind the upcoming Bioshock movie from Netflix, has shared some bad news on the project.

Netflix announced plans to make this movie all the way back in February 2022. By August, they had settled on a director in Francis Lawrence, and a scriptwriter in Michael Green. While news on this project had been sparse since then, we did get a confirmation from Green last year that he was back to work on the film after a writer’s strike was resolved.

As reported by Variety, Roy Lee spoke at a panel in the latest San Diego Comic-Con, where he broke the news. Last February 2024, Scott Stuber left his position as head of Netflix films, to be replaced by Dan Lin. Lin is not a household name, but a heavyweight in the film industry. Among the films he produced are Martin Scorsese’s The Departed and The Aviator, Oliver Stone’s Alexander, Matchstick Men, and the true masterpiece, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed.

That may sound like great credentials, but what Lee has to say about Lin’s tenure isn’t so great. In his words:

“The new regime has lowered the budgets. So we’re doing a much smaller version. … It’s going to be a more personal point of view, as opposed to a grander, big project.”

Lee also spoke a bit about how Lin’s regime is changing compensation so that film productions get paid based on how many people watch the films on Netflix. It’s a move that makes those film productions more accountable, but could squash experimental projects, in favor of more certain mainstream fare.

But the concern here should go to the future of the Bioshock film. While it’s true that low budget science fiction movies does have a rich history, that’s kept going even until modern times with the likes of 2011’s Attack The Block, we would now have to wonder if there’s enough in the budget to bring Rapture to justice.

There’s this common conventional wisdom among movie fans that lower budgets can make movies better, because the production needs to be more creative. But if we’re looking for this production to follow that style, we would be getting a Bioshock movie where the Big Daddy doesn’t come onscreen until the last five minutes.

It’s certainly true that the Bioshock stories, like them or not, are all very personal at their core. Jack, Johnny Delta, Booker Dewitt, Elizabeth, and Eleanor Lamb, all have deeply personal stories that tie them to their games, and fans certainly remember them well and how they made them feel.

But now we can only hope the corners that this Bioshock movie cuts, leads to doing things like filming in Central Europe, instead of cheaping out on the costumes and things like that. Maybe we’ll get a better story out of it in the end, so let’s wait and see.