2024-07-27 21:44:29
Francis Lawrence, the director of four of the five parts of the dystopian saga Hunger Games, will make an adaptation of the computer game BioShock for the Netflix video library. This was confirmed by producer Roy Lee at the Comic-Con pop culture festival in San Diego, California. But the film will be cheaper and more “personal” than originally thought.
As Variety.com reminds us, the Bioshock saga was started by a game released in 2007. The first-person shooter took place in the fictional underwater city of Rapture, which was supposed to become a paradise-like utopia, but due to extreme ideologies and scientific experiments, it fell into chaos, explains the website Deadline .com.
The game, developed by 2K Boston, caught the eye with distinctive visual ideas, such as little girls with huge syringes called Little Sister protected by massive armored monsters in diving suits called Big Daddy.
Players appreciated the narrative full of twists and turns, the aesthetics working with elements of retrofuturism or art deco decorative style and the overall philosophical subtext of the story, referring to writers Aldous Huxley, George Orwell or Ayn Rand.
Shortly after the release of the game, Gore Verbinski, director of the then popular Pirates of the Caribbean, started working on the movie BioShock. In 2009, however, the Universal studio canceled the project due to a too high budget. The game saw two sequels in 2010 and 2013. To date, all three titles in the BioShock series have sold more than 40 million units worldwide.
The new adaptation in 2022 was announced by Netflix when Scott Stuber headed its film division. This year, however, he was replaced by Dan Lin, who prefers a more modest approach instead of big-budget projects.
The first episode of BioShock begins with a plane crash. The hero, the sole survivor, swims to a nearby lighthouse. | Photo: 2K Games
“The new management has reduced our budget. We are still making the film, but it will be more intimate, more personal,” producer Roy Lee confirmed this week.
The film will be shot by 53-year-old Francis Lawrence, who signed four of the five parts of the Hunger Games saga. He directed both the latter from 2013 and last year’s Ballad of Birds and Snakes. In addition, Lawrence is the author of the thriller Constantine with Keanu Reeves in the lead role or the sci-fi I, Legend with Will Smith.
The BioShock game saga itself should continue with a fourth installment in the coming years.
In recent years, the Netflix video library has released three series of the fantasy series The Witcher, which is based on the book, but its popularity was boosted by the computer game.
In 2021, the adaptation of the game Arcane: League of Legends had a response on the platform, which will see a second season this year. Another Castlevania animated series has already had four seasons on Netflix and most recently a standalone fifth called Castlevania: Nocturno. This October, the animated TV series Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft, based on the game series of the same name, will also appear on the platform.
Video: BioShock trailer
All three parts of the BioShock game were re-released by 2K in 2016 under the name BioShock: The Collection. | Video: 2K Games