Gore Verbinski, director of Pirates of the Caribbean, was signed up to do a BioShock movie. It turned out to be too expensive, and now there's a new director. Shame. The expensive one sounded awesome.
Quint from AICN took a tour of Verbinski's GORE studios last week, and asked around about the fate of the franchise's first attempt at making the silver screen.
Turns out "they were building sets when the plug was pulled, one month away from shooting", and that unlike many other CGI-obsessed Hollywood blockbusters, Verbinski "was going to be shooting on real sets and doing as much in-camera as possible".
GORE producer Nils Peyron said the aborted project "was going to be epic and...there was a crazy amount of jaw-dropping art they accumulated during pre-production", art we'd dearly like to see one day.
I hate Avatar, and many other contemporary blockbusters like it, because I've had my fill of computer generated graphics. Even in 2010, they still don't come close to the look and feel of a real set or a real car crashing into a real wall, so hearing Verbinski say he wanted to shoot BioShock "properly" makes me truly sad we'll never get to see his version of the film.
Then again, shooting on big sets with practical effects is also murderously expensive, and his version of the movie was cut for being murderously expensive, so...it's a world of cruel contradictions.
[AICN, thanks Tom!]