Beloved film director Guillermo del Toro has expressed his desire to direct a big budget adaptation of Irrational Games' 2007 classic BioShock as part of a piece offering his thoughts on video games as a storytelling medium.

In the piece written for Shortlist, del Toro says: "As for making movies out of games, the one I could really see is BioShock. I would love to make it into a movie. Gore Verbinski was attached to it, and he would have been perfect."

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A BioShock movie has been in various states of pre-production for some time, but has had trouble getting off the ground.

In February Verbinski told IGN: "What's interesting is when you get that close to shooting a movie, you've kind of made it. That's the danger - you've kind of made it in your head.

"It's one thing when your movie doesn't happen [...] but when you go literally eight weeks before you start shooting, it's devastating."

Del Toro, known for directing Pan's Labyrinth, Pacific Rim and upcoming awards season favourite The Shape of Water, does admit however that "most other games ... are impossible to make into movies."

"They're two completely different narrative forms. Yet for decades there was that game curse on superhero movies, except for the original Superman and Batman films. Most people thought the rest were unadaptable. Then they found a way to do it, and it worked. Something will happen that will allow a truly great video game movie."

BioShock is widely considered one of the best shooters ever made and won acclaim ten years ago for its incredible setting - the fallen utopia of an underwater city called Rapture - and its intelligent, political and meta story.

Del Toro has a long professed his love of video games and has on two occasions attempted to make them. In 2012 he was produce a horror game called Insane with THQ, but the collapse of the publisher forced the project to be shut down.

In 2014 Konami surprised the world with PT (Playable Teaser) an incredible and short horror game that acted as an announcement trailer for a Silent Hill reboot called Silent Hills, which del Toro was to make with Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima.

However, due to Kojima's well-publicised falling out with and eventual departure from Konami the following year, in the run up to the release of Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, the game was cancelled.

"What would I do next?" del Toro wrote after describing the ill-fated projects. "I'd go somewhere and the building would burn down."

Del Toro is set to appear in Kojima's Death Stranding - the first game from his newly independent Kojima Productions - but as a character, rather than a creative collaborator.

Elsewhere in the Shortlist piece, the 53-year-old director describes why he loves video games and what makes them work so well.

"Good games approach storytelling in a different syntax and narrative form than movies, or TV, or novels. They're very useful - they've made me a much more nimble storyteller... The future of games depends on the storytellers."