Gore Verbinski Shares Details on His Failed ‘BioShock’ Movie

This week, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die hits theaters, and it’s the first movie from director Gore Verbsinski in nearly a decade. Before this, though, he was going to direct a movie adaptation of Irrational Games and 2K’s BioShock series, which languished in development hell for years before it died.

In a recent Reddit AMA, Verbinski shed some light on what he’d have done with the film when Universal developed it. He and then-writer John Logan planned to canonize the first game’s two endings, the choices made by players up to that point—or were they really choices at all, hm?—and their consequences. They also planned to “dive deeply into the Oedipal aspect” with the Little Sisters saved or killed by players throughout the game.

“I was looking forward to bringing that to the big screen and really fucking with people’s heads,” said Verbinski, who added that he would’ve “definitely kept it hard R.” He also teased the Big Daddies and underwater city of Rapture had “great designs [and an] entire underwater demented art-deco aesthetic.” That’s all probably music to the ears of anyone who saw and loved his 2017 film A Cure for Wellness for its ambiiton and visuals, or just like his other movies, which probably makes it sting all the more that it’s no longer happening at a time when audiences are willing (enthusiastic, even) to watch directors take creative swings in the horror space.

Netflix is currently making a BioShock movie without Verbinski’s involvement, but he apparently hears about it on a frequent basis. Whatever he’s heard, he doesn’t think non-Universal studios “[are] quite willing to go where I was headed.”

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