Video game franchise BioShock is getting another shot at a film adaptation, this time via Netflix.
The streaming giant has partnered with Take-Two Interactive, the game’s parent company, to develop a potential cinematic universe. Vertigo Entertainment and Take-Two will serve as producers.
No writer or filmmaker is on board at this time. The partnership deal has been in the works for almost a year.
Released in 2007 from 2K Games, a subsidiary of Take-Two, the first-person shooter game was set in a crumbling underwater city named Rapture, its society fragmented in a civil war, with many inhabitants addicted to a genetic enhancement serum that gives them super-human powers while also living in fear of Big Daddies, mutated humans who have been grafted into diving suits. Into this world is dropped the game’s protagonist, Jack, a survivor of a mysterious plane crash in the Atlantic Ocean.
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The game sold millions since its initial release and was followed by two sequels — BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite — which expanded the dystopian landscape as they combined action, sci-fi and horror. The title continues to find itself on lists of best video games ever created.
Hollywood came a knockin’ almost immediately, with a feature project set up at Universal and Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski attached to helm. But very soon after, two issues arose that would follow the project for the next decade: budget and an R-rating. Verbinski and subsequent filmmaker Juan Carlos Fresnadillo butted heads with the studio, even getting as close as months from shooting one iteration before the game’s makers pulled the plug.
Video game adaptations have done very well for Netflix, none better perhaps than The Witcher. A fantasy series fronted by Henry Cavill, it’s one of the top-rated titles on the streaming platform and has a spinoff and an anime movie in the works.
