During Collider’s Producers on Producers Thursday panel at San Diego Comic-Con, an update on Netflix‘s previously announced BioShock adaptation has finally been provided after being announced in 2022. Per producer Roy Lee, the movie is being “reconfigured” to be a “more personal” film with a reduced budget, which is perhaps not the kind of update fans of the near multi-decade gaming franchise were hoping for – but confirmation the movie is still in-development to release at some point in the future is still nice to hear.
During the Comic-Con panel, Lee discussed the fact that the partnership between Take-Two Interactive, the owners of 2k who develop the BioShock games, and Netflix that spurred the development of the BioShock movie adaptation was originally formed during a different regime at the streamer. With Dan Lin replacing Scott Stuber as Netflix’s film chief priorities at the streamer have changed, including a favor for more modestly budgeted projects rather than massive spending.
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“The new regime has lowered the budgets,” said Lee. “So we’re doing a much smaller version… It’s going to be a more personal point of view, as opposed to a grander, more epic project.”
Outside of BioShock, Lee also commented on Netflix’s overall compensation strategy, noting a shift toward bonuses being tied to viewership numbers rather than prospective backend projects. “They’re changing it to be a metric similar to box office bonuses,” he said. “It’s a chart: It’s this amount of viewers, you get this amount of compensation in terms of increased back end. It motivates the producers to actually do a movie that gets a bigger audience.”
As for BioShock as a franchise as a whole, Cloud Chamber is reportedly “ramping up” development on the next entry to the game franchise – BioShock 4, per Cloud Chamber’s Senior Cinematic Designer, Jeff Spoonhower’s recent post on LinkedIn, providing a much desired update on the game following relative silence about it since its initial announcement in 2019. Outside of that update on the game, a leaked screenshot seemingly from the game recently offered a first look at some of the elements of the game, including some of the game’s user interface, health bar, and potentially elemental powers.
San Diego Comic-Con is running now through Sunday, July 28th, so be on the lookout for plenty more news to come as the weekend runs its course.
