A live-action BioShock is coming to Netflix, and it will be directed by The Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence. While screenwriter Michael Green (Logan, Blade Runner 2049, Death on the Nile) will pen the screenplay that brings the popular video game franchise to the big screen. Netflix is partnering with 2K and Take-Two Interactive to produce BioShock the film.
Developed by Irrational Games and published by 2K, a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive Software, the BioShock game franchise includes BioShock, BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite.
Released in 2007 from 2K Games, the first-person shooter game itself was set in a crumbling underwater city named Rapture, its society fragmented in a civil war, with many inhabitants addicted to a genetic enhancement serum that gives them super-human powers while also living in fear of Big Daddies, mutated humans who have been grafted into diving suits. Into this world is dropped the game’s protagonist, Jack, a survivor of a mysterious plane crash in the Atlantic Ocean.
Netflix is banking on a global audience, with the BioShock franchise having sold more than 39 million copies worldwide. The next installment is currently in development by Cloud Chamber.
Producers on the Netflix movie adaptation include Roy Lee for Vertigo Entertainment and Lawrence while Cameron MacConomy and Strauss Zelnick will executive produce.
Video game adaptations have done very well for Netflix, none better perhaps than The Witcher. A fantasy series fronted by Henry Cavill, it’s one of the top-rated titles on the streaming platform and has a spinoff and an anime movie in the works.
