BioShock movie is still “active”

Last August 28 Weeks Later director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo was hired to replace Gore Verbinski as director of Universal’s BioShock movie as Verbinski could not commit to the lengthy overseas filming (Gore decided against directing Pirates 4 for BioShock).

Verbinski, who is still on-board as a producer, said in June the reason they are having a hard time getting things moving is because “it’s a really expensive R-rated movie” and they don’t want to “dumb it down, we don’t want to make it PG-13.” Now the game’s designer Ken Levine has assured fans the film is still being “actively” worked on.

From Kotaku (via ComingSoon)

“I will say that it is still an active thing,” Levine tells DC radio station 106.7. “And it is something we are actively talking about and actively working on.”

That doesn’t mean that filming of the project is 100 percent certain. “I can’t tell you whether — you know, the movie business is complicated — I can’t tell you whether it’s going to happen for sure or it’s not going to happen for sure,” Levin adds. “But it’s something we are actively discussing, quite actively, and actively working on.”

Apparently the budget spiralled to $160 million, which is an average cost for a blockbuster these days, but no studio wants to spend that amount on a R-rated horror (unless James Cameron and Guillermo del Toro are involved). Juan Carlos Fresnadillo is currently filming Intruders with Clive Owen for Universal, so things may develop further after he has finished work on that next year.

For those unfamiliar with the game BioShock takes place in an alternate 1960, and in the game the player takes the role of a plane crash survivor named Jack who must explore the underwater city of Rapture and survive attacks by the mutated beings and mechanical drones that populate it.