Vertigo Entertainment and 2K, a division of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc., have joined forces with Netflix to produce a film based on the video game series Bioshock. Here is a comprehensive overview of what to anticipate from the upcoming adaptation.
There have long been rumours that Netflix is planning to adapt the Bioshock novel into a television series or a motion picture. A Bioshock project has previously been under construction. Previously, a project was planned at Sony Pictures, with Immersive Pictures and Michael De Luca Productions handling production. Additionally, it has previously been set up at Blind Wink Productions and Universal. Copyrights were registered early in 2022 with Netflix attached, and on February 15th, Netflix made the project public.
Describe Bioshock?
The lauded video game series that Ken Levine directed, Bioshock, debuted in 2007. The setting for the game was Rapture, a city beneath the sea. In 2010, a follow-up game that took place 8 years after the first one’s events was released. Then, in 2013, Bioshock Infinite, which was set in a flying city and had a radically different setting, was released.
The franchise is described as follows:
The series, which is “set across multiple dystopian and visionary landscapes gone wrong, blends sci-fi and horror to pose unique existential and societal questions that reshaped how game stories could be told — all amidst pulse-pounding action gameplay that rewards sharp shooting, clever planning, and lethal improvisation,” according to the press release.
John Shirley published a book in 2011 titled “BioShock: Rapture.” In that prequel book, the creation of Rapture is described. We bring this up because both Netflix and 2K have registered the book’s name as a copyright. No information was given about which book Netflix planned to adapt or whether it would be a completely new story at the time of publication.
Since 2013, the franchise has been dormant, but in the coming years, that will change thanks to an untitled sequel being developed by Cloud Chamber Studios, a recently established game studio with teams in California and Québec. The follow-up, which doesn’t yet have a release date, is being actively hired for by Kelley Gilmore, who also heads the studio.
Who is behind Netflix’s Bioshock?
The film’s primary production company will be Vertigo Entertainment. The Grudge, The Lego Movie, and It were all produced by them. With upcoming projects including The Mother, starring Jennifer Lopez and due out in 2022, as well as The Witch Boy and Reborn, a co-production with Fortis Films, Vertigo Entertainment has worked on Netflix’s Extinction and Death Note.
Francis Lawrence (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, I Am Legend, and Netflix’s Slumberland) and Michael Green (Logan, Blade Runner 2049, Death on the Nile), who will both direct and produce the live-action BioShock adaptation, were announced as the screenwriters in August 2022.