Earlier this year, Francis Lawrence was announced as the director of Netflix’s BioShock movie. The Hunger Games director is attached to the film alongside Logan screenwriter Michael Green. Green is currently working on the script, so it’s going to be a while before the adaptation is ready, but Lawrence recently spoke to Collider about the project. In the interview, the director called BioShock “one of the best games ever created,” while heaping praise on its philosophies and mashup of genres. In Lawrence’s mind, all of these factors distinguish it from other video game properties.
“There’s real ideas and philosophies underneath the game property, andit’s really, really, really thought out. A lot of games may have a greatworld of some kind, or they may have a great lead character, or theymay tee you up for great set-pieces, but they don’t really have theideas, they don’t have the kind of weight and the gravitas that Bioshock does. The sort of combo of real ideas and philosophies mixed with theunbelievable aesthetic of it,” said Lawrence. “Plus, one of the other things that I love,love, love is that sort of strange mashup of genre, the idea that youhave what feels like a period piece, mixed with body horror, mixed withsci-fi. It’s one of those great mashups, and I think it can be reallyunique and really beautiful and really entertaining.”
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Clearly Lawrence has a lot of respect for BioShock as a property, which could bode well for the finished product. The director went on to state that he has had discussions with Take-Two Interactive and BioShock creator Ken Levine. It’s impossible to say how much input Levine will have on the film, but his involvement could help to ensure that Netflix’s BioShock feels true to its source material.
Of course, faithfulness to the source material is just one piece of the puzzle; Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City was much closer to the original games than any previous Resident Evil film, yet reception from critics and fans was mixed to say the least! Lawrence seems to have a lot of passion for the BioShock property, so hopefully the end result will please fans and newcomers alike!
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