A BioShock movie at Netflix remains in development, its director has confirmed, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll ever be made. Francis Lawrence confirmed to The Direct that he hopes to make the BioShock movie, but “it’s tricky on a couple fronts.”
Lawrence said he is “definitely active” in working on the BioShock movie, but “it is a tough nut to crack that world and that story.”
“You are the character when you play the game, and so creating that character from scratch into that world that, you know, quite honestly, is pretty batsh** in a most amazing way,” he said. “It’s tricky. So we’re getting there, and we’re getting close, which is great.”
The BioShock movie was originally set to be a large-scale production, but when Netflix film chief Dan Lin came in, the project was scaled back. Lin recently left Netflix amid a major shakeup at the streaming giant, as did longtime chief content officer Bela Bajaria. Former Disney and Fox executive Peter Rice is now the new chief content officer, and Lawrence hopes the management shakeups do not affect the BioShock movie in a big way, but nothing is ever certain in Hollywood.
“I would love nothing more than to be able to make that movie,” Lawrence said of BioShock. “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.”
Lawrence’s latest project is the Hunger Games movie Sunrise on the Reaping, which releases in November. Asked if BioShock would be his next project, Lawrence said, “You never know.” He said working on multiple films simultaneously creates a “horse race” kind of scenario where factors like the script, talent availability, and production realities need to align for projects to go ahead.
Curiously, BioShock producer Roy Lee said the BioShock movie is planned to coincide with the release of a new BioShock game. Lee did not name any specific games outright, but Take-Two recently reiterated that the long-in-development BioShock 4 will see the light of day … some day.