Hollywood is working on a big screen version of underwater opus BioShock. There have been stops and starts, but the game's designer Ken Levine assures the film adaption is being "actively" worked on.


"I will say that it is still an active thing," Levine tells DC radio station 106.7. "And it is something we are actively talking about and actively working on."

That doesn't mean that filming of the project is 100 percent certain. "I can't tell you whether — you know, the movie business is complicated — I can't tell you whether it's going to happen for sure or it's not going to happen for sure," Levin adds. "But it's something we are actively discussing, quite actively, and actively working on."


Levine also discussed the challenges of bringing BioShock to live in cinema. In the game, protagonist Jack is a non-entity. "You can't really do that in a movie," Levin says. "That's your guy, that's the guy you are following through."

The trick is to stay true to the game and also round out the character "so he's not literally a hand with a gun" and "so he's actually a person who is going through some sort of progression through his life."

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Honoring the source material and making it work as a film is, as Levine notes, a "super, super challenge".

Gore Verbinski, the director behind the Pirates of the Caribbean flicks, was originally going to helm the project. But after budget snags, he switched to producing. He is currently working on a handful of other projects.


In his place, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Intacto, 28 Weeks Later) has signed on to direct the movie version of BioShock. Verbinski has stated that the film version needs to be R-rated — a "hard R" — and not PG-13.


Chad Dukes Interviews Ken Levine [106.7 Thanks, Thomas!]