Director Gore Verbinski said he 'loved' working on the BioShock movie and 'was going to dive deeply into the Oedipal aspect': 'Every year I hear something about the project, but I’m not sure any studio is quite willing to go where I was headed'

(Image credit: Take-Two Interactive)

Videogame adaptations to film and television are the new hotness—haven't you heard? Markiplier's Iron Lung flick just took the box office by storm, Yoshi's laying eggs on the silver screen, and the best choice-driven fantasy RPG ever made is getting an HBO show that'll do all the choosing for you. If you're a videogame enjoyer of a certain tenure, you'll even remember the BioShock movie. Not the new one Netflix is developing, but the old one that got killed before it ever reached the finish line.

It was set to be directed by Gore Verbinski, who directed the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies, Rango, and the American version of The Ring. Tonally, BioShock sits somewhere between those three things, so it may have even been good; Verbinski himself seemed to think so, as he explained in a Reddit AMA yesterday.

"I loved this project when we were getting close to making it at Universal. I was going to dive deeply into the Oedipal aspect and definitely keep it hard R with the Little Sisters, and the 'choices' the protagonist makes… and the consequences," Verbinski recalled in his comment. "I had worked out a way with writer John Logan to have both endings and I was looking forward to bringing that to the big screen and really fucking with people’s heads. Had some great designs for the Big Daddies and the entire underwater demented art-deco aesthetic."

It certainly sounds like he had an interest in what made BioShock tick, and even as a perpetual skeptic of videogame films (the Warcraft movie burned me pretty bad) the thought of a Big Daddy rendered properly in live action sounds pretty snazzy. He's talked about the incorporation of multiple endings in the past, like in this Collider report, where he again compares the game's story to Oedipus Rex.

Justin first became enamored with PC gaming when World of Warcraft and Neverwinter Nights 2 rewired his brain as a wide-eyed kid. As time has passed, he's amassed a hefty backlog of retro shooters, CRPGs, and janky '90s esoterica. Whether he's extolling the virtues of Shenmue or troubleshooting some fiddly old MMO, it's hard to get his mind off games with more ambition than scruples. When he's not at his keyboard, he's probably birdwatching or daydreaming about a glorious comeback for real-time with pause combat. Any day now...

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