“BioShock is still in development,” director Francis Lawrence recently told IGN when asked about his planned Netflix movie adaptation of the acclaimed video game franchise, which was first announced in 2022.
The subject of BioShock’s current status came up when I interviewed Lawrence for his upcoming Stephen King movie, The Long Walk.
“I just actually just got a draft. We have a meeting with the writer tomorrow [May 7th], so that’s definitely a very strong possibility as well,” Lawrence said.
Michael Green (Logan, Blade Runner 2049) wrote earlier drafts of the BioShock screenplay but Lawrence said this latest draft is by Justin Rhodes (Terminator: Dark Fate, Secret Level). Development on the screenplay was put on hold during the Writers Guild strike in 2023.
Lawrence – whose credits include the Hunger Games franchise, I Am Legend, and Constantine – acknowledged that it’s proven challenging turning BioShock into a movie, but is optimistic about its prospects of finally happening.
“It’s a tricky adaptation, so there’s lots of things to figure out and to get right,” Lawrence said. “There’s regime changes at Netflix, and so things stall out and get re-energized and stall out and get re-energized, and I think we’re in a pretty good place, honestly.”
The regime change Lawrence is alluding to were first mentioned at San Diego Comic-Con 2024 by BioShock producer Roy Lee who revealed at the time that the film had been “reconfigured.”
“The new regime has lowered the budgets,” Lee said. “So we’re doing a much smaller version. … It’s going to be a more personal point of view, as opposed to a grander, big project.”
A now-slimmed down version of a BioShock movie suggests elements from the games such as the underwater city Rapture might have been deemed too expensive by a now price-conscious Netflix.
Lawrence has previously promised that his BioShock movie will be “really true to the game itself,” although exact details on the project remain murky except for BioShock creator Ken Levine and Take-Two Interactive being involved with it.
Should a Francis Lawrence-directed BioShock movie actually happen then The Boys’ Jack Quaid wants to play a role in it.
