You may have heard about the proposed movie that was supposed to be based on the Art Deco underwater game BioShock and directed by Pirates of the Caribbean helmsman Gore Verbinski. Well, the latest word is that the project is sunk and Verbinski has jumped ship.
What’s up? Well, according to the director, they just couldn’t find any backers to make the bloody R-rated version of the movie that he had in mind. “I just wanted to really, really make it a movie where, four days later, you’re still shivering and going, ‘[expletive]!,'” he recently told comingsoon.net.
Now, for those of you who don’t know anything about the game, it’s an M-rated adventure/shooter title that sold like hotcakes when it was released a few years back. It featured, among other blood-lusting freaky characters, Big Daddies who clunked around in gigantic underwater diving suits armed with gigantic, flesh-ripping drills, and Little Sisters, waif-like little girls who sucked drugs out of dead bodies with two foot-long needles. Gamers had to make their way through this dystopian underwater realm while killing just about everything they encountered—including, if they wanted to, the Little Sisters.
Now, if you’re saying, “Well, how could that not be R-rated,” I’d say you’re right. We here at Plugged In have often made the case that M-rated games and R-rated movies can be pretty close siblings. But it’s always so interesting to see parents grabbing an M-rated shooter for the kids when they wouldn’t even consider taking them to the latest Jason Statham flick.
This current video-game-to-movie situation, however, is even more interesting, I think. The studios can’t see themselves making a BioShock pic with anything over a PG-13 rating. And the big reason seems to be that they didn’t want to alienate all those teen gamers, who wouldn’t be allowed in to see an R-rated version.
To recap: The game isn’t supposed to be sold to anyone under 17 … but the movie has to cater to the game’s teen fans.
Hmmm. Seems we have a failure to communicate.
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