July 7, 2010 
Gore Verbinski has confirmed that he is still working on a film adaptation of the acclaimed video game Bioshock. Movement on the project stalled late last year, when Universal Studios supposedly balked at the projected budget.
Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean) spoke to IGN regarding his upcoming production:
“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.”
When asked whether or not the poor box office performance of recent video game adaptation Prince of Persia had hurt Bioshock, Verbinski answered:
“No, I think BioShock‘s a rare one because it’s actually a great story… Me? I don’t want to make movies based on videogames, but BioShock’s the one Oedipal, crazy kind of — it’s just got really good bones, and we’re really trying to figure out a way to make it work.”
To read more of the interview, head on over to IGN.
Discuss: Now, I’m not exactly an avid gamer, so perhaps someone who has played Bioshock can share with us their feelings on Verbinski producing a film adaptation. First up: What is a Bioshock?
Quickflix 
Bioshock was a game based in the 1950's in the underwater city of Rapture. Rapture in the game was created to get away from main stream society and allow science and art to be developed without restrictions that governments place.As a game it was brilliant and fun. The thought of it being turned into a movie though fills me with dread…
Many aspects of the game's plot were an homage to the writing/philosophy of Ayn Rand, especially the novel "Atlas Shrugged". It is rare that a video game is based so heavily on serious literature. Add to that an awesome, 1950s retro-aesthetic and some solid gameplay and you have a gaming masterpiece.
Bioshock is good but I wouldn't exactly call anything by Ayn Rand "serious" literature; philosphically, it's about one step away from L. Ron Hubbard's stuff. You could probably make a good game with a good story out of his crap too. I hope that the film is good. And, talking about conversions between books, games, and films, I REALLY hope that someone soon makes a good film version of the book "Roadside Picnic" – so far, Stalker and The Sphere are pale and crappy, respectively, in comparison, though the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R seems to have got good reviews on the merit of the sort of things that made the book good.
To elaborate on the previous comments: BioShock's about the city of Rapture, an Objectivist utopia built on the bottom of the ocean and populated with those among the best and brightest who felt that they were held back by parasites and lesser minds. Rapture's a place where there's a market for breathable air, and people would rather burn forests than be forced to share them. It's also a place where, thanks to a sea slug colony found on the ocean floor, genetic engineering is cheap and plentiful – until the slugs are all harvested. The results are not pretty. The citizenry are addicted to ever more bizarre forms of genetic engineering (like starting fires with your mind) and the only way to get the stem cells required is to harvest them from the dead. (The big guy in the diving suit is involved in this – he's protection for the harvesters, genetically modified little girls that can detect usable stem cells amongst the dead bodies.) The main character, Jack, is in a plane accident that delivers him to Rapture's doorstep, and he's swept into a civil war as the city's founder, Andrew Ryan, tries to crack down on the resistance, led by the charismatic Atlas. But nothing is as it seems – Ryan's not exactly a tyrant, Atlas is no hero and the plane accident was anything but…As for an adaptation, it's a tough one – Bioshock has a lot of meat to it, and it's striking and all that, but most of its strength from a movie standpoint is its strikingly realised setting. Most production designers would have a wet dream over how much fun they'd have with Rapture. However, the game's plot would need some surgery to work – most of the monologues would need to be converted to dialogue, for instance, and they'd need to work out a satisfying way to bring the Big Daddies and Little Sisters into the civil war side of the plot. Jack's personality and motivations also figure into the plot much more than you're led to believe, so they'd need to be careful there, too.
I hear 'Bioshock' and I think of thise little plastic canisters of toy you can buy for kids. R rated film – Plastic toy?Doesn't seem to mix…
At least it's not by Uwe Boll.*shudder* Alone in the dark…..