E3 2009: Pirates of the Caribbean director likely bidding bon voyage to Rapture, but will be getting his feet wet in game development.
LOS ANGELES--It has been anything but smooth sailing lately for the big-screen adaptation of 2K Games' BioShock. The project reportedly ran into budgetary problems in April, and now Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski is having second thoughts about whether he'll helm the project after all.
"The bottom line is it has to shoot out of the States for budget reasons and my schedule may be prohibitive," Verbinski told The Los Angeles Times. "There's a great script and a really interesting cast. It really comes down to the financial model now. Big movies are just not being shot in the States. I'm weighing whether I can physically go the UK or Australia or one of those other places with a tax rebate for a year and a half."
Even if he doesn't direct the BioShock adaptation, this likely isn't the last gamers will hear of Verbinski. The Times also reports that Verbinski's production house, Blind Wink, is currently working on five different gaming projects. To help develop the games--one of which has reached the prototype stage--Verbinski enlisted former Pandemic Studios designer Will Stahl.
"They're wildly diverse," Verbinski said of the projects. "Some of the stuff we’re doing is taking a conventional [first-person shooter] experience and tweaking it in a way that hasn't been thought of before. We looked at it from a different angle and changed the experience."
Brendan Sinclair has been a games journalist since 1999. His tastes are eclectic, though he has a definite affinity for games with arcade roots. He's Canadian, but has also been at home in Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, and San Francisco.
It's better to have it crash and burn, than to put out a piece of crap with low level actors and a second rate script. One thing I can't stand is having a great looking movie, but lousy acting/meaningless story. Let's hope someone like a Michael Mann or a Peter Jackson get's involved.
@Bardock47 There was a rumour going around that Wentworth Miller (from Prison Break) was going to be the lead character in the film. Haven't heard anything else about the rest of the cast though.
@SillySkeleton: I think the reason they 're-think' is to bring games/comics to a wider audience. And also, coz different media work differently. Problem comes when hacks with no knowledge of either media try their hands. Not all properties can be translated verbatim from one medium to another. But it takes a talent to spot that.
When will film directors learn... No-one wants them to 're-think' the concepts of the games/comics, etc. they are based off of. Goku in High School? Resident Evil with a random super-human -who wasn't even in the games- as the main character? *sigh*
Ok, take some time too think the movie through. Make sure its good enough to have the bioshock name attached to it.
it's stupid to say it wouldn't work, with a good director everything can work anyway i have my doubts about verbinski sometimes he seems a brilliant director and others... well he seems to like money too much, he totally sold himself for pirates of the caribbean (the last ones were crap)
you know it may not even be about the original bioshock story it might be during the fall of rapture, or some event during that time.
Bioshock does have some potential when it would come to a movie addaption. Yeah most games to movies don't work too well...but I did really enjoy Silent Hill to be perfectly honest.
Nooo, this can't be happening again!!! First Halo, then God of War, now this!? What's going on producers?? If a movie can't be made due to budget reasons then think twice about even mentioning it to us gamers, gamers whose only crime was hoping to much from a great director. Gore Verbinski if your out there reading this or if any of your people are, then please take my advice and make this movie, who cares if its outside of the U.S.? Plenty of movies are filmed in other places of the world!! Gamers really want you to go through with Bioshock so please do so, and don't sink down to where other directors are (Peter Jackson & Brett Ratner)!!!! Chances are Gore Verbinski is the only director in the world who could pull off Bioshock....
Even if he did direct it, I would wait till it hit DVD before I saw it. No Game2movie has been really good or excellent. There have been a couple OK movies in the Resident Evil & Tomb Raider franchises but most are just utter crap not even worth watching even if Uwe ball handed the movie to you for free.
@pakhair Not all game2movies are bad, Resident Evil movies are excellent and the Doom movie was good.
Can't say anything about BIOSHOCK MOVIE............. But Game based movies are always awful & terrible...........
E3 Live Show Schedule on Gamespot (Click Here)
wow, Gore finally had a chance to cement him self as a credible director but is turning it down due to some lame excuse like travel problems
it wont be totally like the game tho... im guessing hes actually going to have someback story lol cuz move characters need that. maybe he is flying from new york to england to visit his fam, and boom, plane crash!!! then jack just stumbles upon rapture... then he goes in and everything and sees a little sister harvesting adam from someone, and hes like little girl are you lost? little girl? then he taps her on the shoulder and "rrraaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!" big daddy!!! jack grabs the little girl and runs down a corridor for his and hers life! the little girl screams "Mr. B!!!" the big daddy pursues relentlessly... jack hits a dead end... distracted by looking for cover the little girl grabs her syringe and stabs jack in his arm, then scrambles to a near by escape hole... jack falls to his knees, he feels a pain like hes never experienced... his hands begin to electrify... the big daddy stalks in slowly, puzzled by the disapearence of his little companion... jack moaning in agony throws out his arm with a yell and a bolt of lightning strikes the big daddy... paralyized the big daddy stands frozen, jack stands with a look of amazement... then he hears the cocking of of a shotgun, then a blast... the big daddy falls. "Come on we gotta get going, that beast will be up soon!" jack and the stranger run... when they reach safety the stranger introduces himself as atlas...
Even if other "game to movie" adaptations have sucked (big time), this has the potential to be a really good movie. Hope I actually see it on the big screen on not on some crappy straight to DVD release.
Whoever directs this is going to have a hard time getting a movie which works as well as the game. I don't like all these "Conversions" movie-->game or game-->movie because quite often something gets lost in the translation. Although I hope this really works, I'm not holding my breath.
I think Bioshock is one of those movies that could work for real people. Others are meant to be CG.
I hope they can stick with Gore. The Ring and the first Pirates movie are really well made films. My only issue with the later Pirtates films where that they should have been 90 minutes to two hours each rather than 3 hours each, but I think that's something that a director can learn pretty quickly. @Webdoom, that's a one way ticket to bankruptcy. I read that the budget for this film was some crazy insanely high number. Bioshock just isn't a popular enough franchise to warrant the amount of money they were asking for. Prince of Persia gets away with it because the formula is kinda generic and something that could have been made into a summer blockbuster similar to the Mummy and Van Helsing even without the game tie-in. Essentially, it's the type of genre film that has been made time and time before and been proven financially successful time and time before. Bio-shock is some moderately depressing under the sea story. That's gonna be harder to get people to come out for, therefore harder to justify spending some insane budget on.
Well maybe another better director will be able to shoot out of states... although those cheap bastards should fork up the money to help out their own country.
Even if it comes out, let's hope that this movie will be better that dragonball evolution or max payne.
I'm sure there are other talented directors available to helm this film. Bioshock is a terrific game franchise and it deserves someone who will treat the source material with respect while at the same time appealing to people who haven't played the game.
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