According to game designer Ken Levine in an interview with Chad Dukes at Washington D.C. radio station 106.7 “The Fan” (via Kotaku and 1-Up), the long-in-development-hell movie version of his game BioShock is still an “active thing.” You can hear the actual interview on the station’s Podcast.
“I will say that it is still an active thing,” Levine told the radio station. “And it is something we are actively talking about and actively working on. The movie business is complicated I can’t tell you whether it’s going to happen for sure or it’s not going to happen for sure, but it’s something we are actively discussing, quite actively, and actively working on.”
The popular, addictive first person shooter game that debuted in 2007 involves the survivor of an ocean plane crash who finds the underwater city of Rapture where he has to fight off large mechanical drones known as Big Daddy and people mutated and driven crazy by corporate experiments. Even though Levine wasn’t involved in the follow-up game, BioShock 2 was released earlier this year to similar acclaim. Those who’ve been following the movie’s development from when it was going to be directed by Gore Verbinski, who decided only to produce the movie when the budget wasn’t to his liking, already know that 28 Weeks Later helmer Juan Carlos Fresnadillo was last signed to direct the movie.
Levine is well aware of the “super, super challenges” of bringing his game to the big screen, including having the protagonist not be seen on screen (since gamers play as that character). “You can’t really do that in a movie,” he admitted. “That’s your guy, that’s the guy you are following through. So he’s not literally a hand with a gun, he’s actually a person who is going through some sort of progression through his life.”
Verbinski has stated previously that the movie would have to be a “hard R” rather than a PG-13, which may make it harder to get the necessary budget to do the game justice.
A third game titled “BioShock Infinite” was announced earlier this month with the teaser trailer you can watch below. The first game’s developer, Irrational Games, is making the game that is expected to hit stores in 2012.
