Now that the film and TV industries have finally cracked the code to making decent, sometimes great, live-action adaptations of video games, there’s actually good reason to pay attention to the developments of these works. To be excited about them, even. One of the latest games to get the treatment is none other than Xbox 360-era darling BioShock. The first one (not Infinite, thank god).
As reported by The Direct, producer Roy Lee (A Minecraft Movie, Weapons, The Long Walk) said that while everything else about the movie must be kept secret, “it’s definitely going to be based on the first BioShock game.” The deep sea adaptation hit a snag after some necessary script work, but it looks like it’s on track; now it just awaits director Francis Lawrence (Constantine, The Hunger Games, The Long Walk) who first has to wrap work on The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping.
While I’ve been something of a hater of the non-stop barrage of live-action video game adaptations, I find the idea of bringing the first BioShock “to life” as a big-budget movie a neat proposition. Sure, the story is the most obvious expression of why Atlas Shrugged’s themes are stupid, but the setting, the underwater city of Rapture, was a real treat to explore, and seeing it reproduced on the big screen should be a treat.
As a thematic device, Rapture is a pretty straightforward tool for skewering libertarian-minded politics, but as a setting, it’s dreamy and atmospheric, with tremendous potential for some seriously cool set and prop design. And if Francis Lawrence’s work on 2007’s I Am Legend is anything to go by, the man knows how to work well with evocative settings. Who knows, maybe we’ll take some better lessons away from this trip down to the doomed ocean floor city than we did the first time.