Streaming giants Netflix have a BioShock movie to make and, after pointing their golf club at various directors, they’ve selected Francis Lawrence. He’s best known for overseeing three of The Hunger Games movies and is working on the prequel coming out next year, The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes.
Netflix have also hired screenwriter Michael Green for the BioShock flick. Green wrote the Kenneth Branagh versions of Agatha Christie’s Murder On The Orient Express and Death On The Nile. I guess that means he’s got experience of period settings.
Netflix revealed they were planning a BioShock movie back in February, and seem to want it to become a cinematic universe. Pirates Of The Carribean director Gore Verbinski was the first director attached to a possible movie based on Andrew Ryan’s undersea shenanigans only a year after the game was released, but that fell through. Ken Levine said that he personally killed another attempt by 28 Weeks Later director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo a few years later.
Along with the BioShock developments, Netflix announced that they’re setting on The Umbrella Academy’s Michael Blackman as showrunner for their upcoming TV series based on Horizon Zero Dawn. Asked whether game protagonist Aloy would be the main character, Blackman said that she’ll be “a main character in our story”. Going to fill in the gaps there and take that to mean the show will be an ensemble.
The red streaming service has quite a few game adaptations in the works or already plopping onto people’s devices. I’ve covered Netflix’s live-action Resident Evil TV show already, which might end up shoving in more characters from the games than just Albert Wesker. I’m hoping for a Barry and Moira Burton sitcom, personally.
They’ve also adapted BioWare’s fantasy series for animation Dragon Age: Absolution, have released another season of Dota: Dragon’s Blood, and are prepping season two of League Of Legends animation Arcane. CD Projekt’s spin-off Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is due to start streaming in September too. Oh, and then there’s another season of The Witcher coming.
The BioShock movie isn’t earmarked for a release date yet. Let’s hope it doesn’t turn out to be BioSchlock.