Much like the Halo movie before it, the film adaptation for Bioshock has had a long, troubled history. Yet much like Microsoft’s revived hopes of producing an adaptation of their Halo title, Sony now looks to be reviving the 2K Games/Irrational Studios gaming franchise from the depths of abandonment.
Kotaku first ran with a story that Sony Pictures had registered several domain names with "Bioshock Movie" in the title. This was reported to have happened last month, which doesn’t sound all that weird considering that falls between the announcements of both Halo TV shows, and both Halo and Bioshock were axed at Universal Studios around the same time . Both projects could have been picked up in turnaround, with Halo being announced first, because of the Xbox Live exclusivity.
In fact, the only reason one could assume Sony hasn’t officially announced Bioshock as an acquisition is simply because they’re already focused on The Amazing Spider-Man franchise. That’s where most of their money is, and Bioshock, while being a pretty good prospective acquisition, still isn’t a definite box office hit. To speculate even further, it could be assumed that Sony is waiting until E3 to make an announcement, which is where we’re supposed to learn more about Ridley Scott’s "digital chapter" Halo project.
Of course, this is all on the heels of Irrational Games founder and Bioshock game director Ken Levine "personally killing" any hopes of an adaptation. However, this particular piece of the puzzle can go two different ways. In the first scenario, 2K Games most likely owns the rights to the franchise, and can make the film whether Levine allows them to or not. The second, and more likely scenario, is Mr. Levine (who’s still working for 2K Games’ subsidiary, Take Two) is working on that screenplay he promised after completing work on Bioshock: Infinite.
It’s been a long, hard road for the Bioshock franchise, and even now we don’t even know if it’s a road that’s going to be repaved and crossed or torn down for something in its place. Speculation aside, there’s not much of a reason for a studio to reserve a domain name they don’t intend to at least contemplate using. At the very least, we now know that the possibility of bringing Rapture to the big screen is on someone’s mind, and depending on who that is, it could be enough to bring it into reality. For now, all we can do is dream that sometime in the near future, we’ll see a fully fleshed out version of that place where there are "no Gods or Kings, only Man."
