BIOSHOCK Movie Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo Drops Out
I love the world of Bioshock, and it would be so cool if a film adaptation actually ended up getting made. For some reason, Universal Pictures just can't get their shit together with it. Gore Verbinski was the first director attached to take on the film, which would have been awesome, but he ended up dropping out of the project, although he stayed on as a producer. After Verbinski, 28 Weeks Later director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo jumped on board to direct it, but now he's off the project leaving the big screen adaptation of Bioshock directorless.
The Playlist recently caught up with the director, and here's what he had to say:
To be honest, by now, I’m completely out of that, and developing other stuff… Right now it’s on hold. The studio and the videogame company, they have to reach some kind of agreement about the budget and the rating.
So basically, the studio wants the film to be a cheap PG-13 rated movie, while the game developers and 2K games, led by Ken Levine, want to create a high quality R-rated film that will stay true to the game's tone and story. In a previous interview with Verbinski, he said that it had to be a hard "R" film,
We're working trying to make it. The problem with BioShock was: R-rated movie, underwater, horror. It's a really expensive R-rated movie. So we're trying to figure out a way working with [director] Juan Carlos [Fresnadillo] to get the budget down and still keep so it's true to the core audience, you know? The thing is it has to be R, a hard R.
I imagine that if the game developers don't get what they want they will end up taking it to another studio, which it sounds like the should do anyway. Maybe they're just waiting for whatever contract they have together to expire.
It's frustrating that no one can seem to come to an agreement on this. What it should all come down to is what the fans want to see. And the fans want what the creators want. Here's what Levin said last year:
…for us there’s no burning [desire] to have a movie made just to get it made. For us and for Take-Two, it’s really got to be something that will a) give the fans something that they want, and b) for those who don’t know BioShock, really introduce them to something that is consistent with the game, and is it going to be a good representation of the game. There are differences between games and movies, no doubt, but the movie has to draw from the same DNA in terms of the world and the story beats. But you know, we don’t have a need to get it made.
It's refreshing to hear that. Now that Fresnadillo is out of the project, who whould you like to see come in and take his place as the director of Bioshock?