Guillermo del Toro has revealed an interview with IGN that he was actively involved in early attempts to get a movie adaptation of BioShock off the ground, but one “disastrous” phone call resulted in the project being canned.
You know, I tried. We had a very contentious call about a couple of games. I find that the dynamics of a video game are very different than a movie. They may be cinematically similar in terms of the camera moving and this and that, but the storytelling is very different, because you’re not solving puzzles. You’re not assembling. When we made the structure for Insane, we created what I call a mandala. You have to give the illusion of an infinite sandbox and you lead audiences to the right or to the left through their ‘own decisions,’ but you sort of have to corner them. So it’s a very different thing.
“So adapting it, BioShock, we had a couple of calls,” said del Toro. “They are probably one of the most disastrous calls I’ve ever had. So no, f**k no.”
Originally the BioShock movie was going to be directed by Gore Verbinski, but he stepped down after the production studio shifted the project overseas. The film then remained in limbo for years, although Verbinski would later reveal that the movie was scrapped just eight weeks before filming was set to begin.
Fast-forward to early 2026, and the BioShock movie is getting another stab at life with Roy Lee taking on the role of producer, and revealed that Take-Two and Netflix are eager to get the film out to coincide with the next instalment in the BioShock video game series. That’s currently in the works at Cloud Chamber, but has still yet to receive an official reveal so it could still be years away at this point.
[Source – IGN]