Gore Verbinski Explains What Happened to His ‘Bioshock’ Movie in Reddit AMA

The publicity circuit isn’t what it used to be. Actors, writers, and directors now regularly take to Reddit to hawk their latest project with an AMA, an open Q&A sesh with the many denizens of the internet. By giving the floor to the people, AMAs tend to cover a wider breadth of topics than the usual formal interview, and tease out little bits of trivia that otherwise go unmentioned. Gore Verbinski, currently drumming up support for his madhouse horror flick A Cure for Wellness, made an appearance on Reddit and fielded a diverse array of inquiries, one of which shed a little light on his lost Bioshock project.

In 2008 Verbinski was confirmed for a big-screen adaptation of the fan-favorite dystopian video game Bioshock, but the project fizzled out and nothing ever came of it. Many fans still wonder why, and one of them saw fit to ask Verbinski for some clarification. He kindly obliged:

Well it’s no short answer to that question but we were eight weeks prior shooting when the plug was pulled. It’s an R rated movie. I wanted to keep it R rated, I felt like that would be appropriate, and it’s an expensive movie. It’s a massive world we’re creating and it’s not a world we can simply go to locations to shoot. A Cure For Wellness, we were able to really utilize a variety of location to create the world. Bioshock it wouldn’t work like that, we’d be building an entire underworld universe. So I think the combination of the price tag and the rating, Universal just didn’t feel comfortable ultimately. At that time also there were some R rated, expensive R rated movies that were not working. So I think things have changed and maybe there will be another chance, but it’s very difficult when you’re eight weeks away from shooting a movie you really can see in your head and you’ve almost filmed the entire thing, so emotionally you’re right at that transition from architect to becoming a contractor and that will be a difficult place to get back to.

That the studio backed out doesn’t exactly qualify as a major revelation, but it’s good to hear it from Verbinski. Bioshock’s popularity hasn’t faded, and if A Cure for Wellness ends up performing at the box-office, the concept may be worth revisiting.