Ken Levine says no Bioshock movie needed

I often forget about video game movie adaptations. Too many come along and just as quickly as they are are announced they then slip, trip, and fall into development hell never to be seen or heard of again. It’s almost a natural cycle at this point. Bioshock is one of those movies that seems like it was announced ages ago and still hasn’t seen the light of day. Apparently it’s a point of contention for the director of the original game who at this points feels that it’s not necessary.

Source: /Film

We got very close to having it get made – we had a deal in place and a director. But for us there’s no burning [desire] to have a movie made just to get it made. For us and for Take-Two, it’s really got to be something that will a) give the fans something that they want, and b) for those who don’t know BioShock, really introduce them to something that is consistent with the game, and is it going to be a good representation of the game. There are differences between games and movies, no doubt, but the movie has to draw from the same DNA in terms of the world and the story beats. But you know, we don’t have a need to get it made.

Wow. It’s not often that I hear a representative of a company who sold another company the rights to adapt a property to eventually say something like this. I understand his point of view on the subject but I don’t like it. Although I’m not particularly a fan of the game series itself I was a big fan of the environments and the world developed within the game. The story was compelling and could easily have housed a few narratives to carry a film. It probably would have to be a fairly big undertaking to create the movie I’m imagining in my head rather than trying to go the, let’s say, ‘Paul W.S. Anderson’ route by starting off with a lower budget film to first prove that it’s financially safe to invest large amounts of money in a franchise. I get it, I just don’t like this either way and hope he’s ignored enough to eventually get a film made.