Launching in 2006, Bioshock quickly became a popular video game property, and there have also been numerous attempts to get a Bioshock film adaptation off the ground since 2008. After nearly a decade and a half of setbacks, the Bioshock movie is now set up at Netflix, and today brings word that The Hunger Games’ Francis Lawrence and Logan’s Michael Green have been brought aboard the project.
Francis Lawrence, who directed the latter three of the main Hunger Games movies, has been tapped to direct Bioshock, and Michael Green, who wrote Logan (a.k.a. Hugh Jackman’s final outing as Wolverine) is penning the script. Deadline’s writeup of this official announcement noted that because Lawrence is currently working on the Hunger Games prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the plan is for Green adapt the Bioshock script in time for when Lawrence is able to jump into pre-production. The outlet also stated that Netflix selected Lawrence to direct Bioshock because he has “shown the ability at adapting popular IP into global hits.”
Outside of the Hunger Games space, Francis Lawrence’s credits include Constantine, I Am Legend, Water for Elephants, Red Sparrow and Slumberland, the latter of which is another forthcoming Netflix movie. Green is no stranger to genre work either, as along with Logan, he’s written movies like Blade Runner 2049, Murder on the Orient Express, Jungle Cruise and Death on the Nile, as well as episodes of TV shows like Smallville, Heroes and American Gods. Fingers crossed that these these two have better luck getting Bioshock off the ground than past attached talent like Gore Verbinski and John Logan. Before Netflix teamed up with Take-Two Interactive and 2K to make Bioshock happen, the project had been housed at Universal Pictures.
For those unfamiliar with Bioshock, the core series mixes first-person shooter and role-playing elements for stories set in a dystopic, sci-fi and horror-twisted version of Earth. While the events of 2007’s Bioshock and 2010’s Bioshock 2 respectively unfolded 1960 and 1968 in the underwater city called Rapture, 2013’s Bioshock Infinite wound the clock back to 1912 and took place in the levitating city called Columbia. The latter two Bioshock games delivered additional downloadable content/expansions, but next year will mark a decade since Infinite’s release. A new Bioshock game was announced to be in development in September 2019, but it’s unclear where things currently stand with it.
It’ll be a while until Netflix subscribers are able to watch the Bioshock movie, but once more news starts trickling in, including who will comprise the main cast, we’ll pass that information along. In the meantime, the 2022 Netflix movie schedule is available to peruse so you can learn what cinematic content the streaming service has left to deliver this year.
