Bioshock is well into development for a big screen adaptation, however budget concerns and ratings are a big topic around that board room table right now.
We’re working trying to make it. The problem with BioShock was: R-rated movie, underwater, horror. It’s a really expensive R-rated movie. So we’re trying to figure out a way working with [director] Juan Carlos [Fresnadillo] to get the budget down and still keep so it’s true to the core audience, you know? The thing is it has to be R, a hard R….We don’t want to dumb it down, we don’t want to make it PG-13. We want to keep it really edgy, and it’s a huge bill.
This is much of the conflict in Hollywood.
Rated R films reduce your target audience. But they undertake these films that people assume will be R. Bioshock is a Rated M game, so R sounds accurate. But I have always said no movie NEEDS to be an R. They can choose to make it an R Rated film, but the limitations of the market balanced against the limitations of PG13 becomes an awkward stretch.
They are determined to make it an R, tossing out the over used “Hard R” but the budget needed to go there might be too much for the risk of investment. Especially considering how past video game franchise adaptations have fared.
We still hold our breath and wait for someone to make a video game adaptation that kills that stigma instead of just being the exception to that rule.
