If director Gore Verbinski (Pirates of Caribbean) were to helm the picture, he says the movie would need to be filmed abroad. "The bottom line is it has to shoot out of the States for budget reasons and my schedule may be prohibitive." he tells The Los Angeles Times. "Big movies are just not being shot in the States. I'm weighing whether I can physically go the U.K. or Australia or one of those other places with a tax rebate for a year-and-a-half."

In the mean time, Verbinski is busying himself with game development at his production company Blind Wink. He's hired Pandemic game designer Will Stahl to lead the endeavor. Blink Wink is working of five projects. "Some of the stuff we're doing is taking a conventional [first person shooter] experience and tweaking it in a way that hasn't been thought of before," Verbinski explains. "We looked at it from a different angle and changed the experience."

Verbinski is giving Stahl room to breath and not trying to impose Hollywood on game design. According to Verbinski:

When I meet with Hans Zimmer on a score, I don't tell him what notes to play. My respect for artists is very high. I think to get the most out of them, you have to liberate them. I think part of liberating them is saying, "Come up with something brilliant, new, and fresh. Stop thinking based on what has been beat into you by executives or publishers in terms of what's going to work and what's not. Don't react, just act."

I want to be clear I'm not not talking about directing a game the way I direct a movie. There are better people. It's more assembling a great team of talented people and getting them inspired.

More in the link below.

Company Town: Breaking industry news and scoops [The Los Angeles]

The BioShock film, currently in pre-production, was announced last May by Universal and 2K, with Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski attached to helm the film and John Logan, responsible for Gladiator and The Aviator, planned to pen the script.

According to a Universal Pictures spokesperson, the film remains very much alive in extended pre-production "so the studio and production can take a look at possible alternate shooting locations, available tax credits, foreign exchange rates and other elements that might help us make the film at a responsible budget."

"No plug has been pulled on BioShock," reps told Kotaku. "Universal remains committed to making the project and Gore absolutely remains attached as director."

According to additional reporting from Variety, Universal has cut back on pre-production headcount, noting that the film's budget had skyrocketed to $160 million, citing unnamed sources.

Variety writes that Universal is looking to have the production moved outside of the U.S. to reduce shooting costs.

"We are evaluating whether this is something we want to do," Verbinski is quoted as saying. "In the meantime, the film is in a holding pattern."

The BioShock film did not have an announced release date, but given the current status of the film's production, we wouldn't expect to see it any time soon.

Instead of directing the fourth Pirates, which is once again starring Johnny Depp, Verbinski has told producer Jerry Bruckheimer that he has opted to focus his energies on the BioShock movie, slated to being production in 2010.

"I had a fantastic time bringing Pirates to life, and I am eternally grateful to Jerry, Johnny and the rest of the creative and production team," the director said. "I'm looking forward to all of us crossing paths again in the future."

Bruckheimer is also moving into bringing video games to the silver screen — most notably, he's producing the Prince of Persia Hollywood adaptation.

After BioShock, Verbinski is developing other game related projects, including a drama based on a Wall Street Journal article about MMOs and how it can affect the lives of players.

Verbinski Won't Set Sail For A 4th Pirates. Would Rather Do Videogames Instead. [Latino Review]

After Crecente posted the news of Verbinski's purchase of the rights to the 2007 Wall Street Journal article about a man cheating on his wife in Second Life, I hopped onto the virtual world in order to ask Ric Hoogestraat's avatar Dutch what he thought about his situation possibly turning into a film. Not surprisingly, he hadn't heard anything about it.

The story belongs to the Wall Street Journal now, so it wasn't necessary for either the paper or Verbinski to get in touch with Hoogestraat whatsoever. Pity though. His avatar has an extremely kick-ass pirate-themed sim in SL that I'm sure the Pirates of the Caribbean director would just love.

While trying to contact Dutch, I got a pretty good idea of what had happened since the original article ran back in 2007.

According to his profile in Second Life, he now lives in Arizona with the player of the avatar he was cheating on his wife with, having married her in December of last year, several months after the article ran in which he repeatedly assured his wife that it was just role-playing. I guess that whole bit had changed.

Just a tip here folks. If your spouse is married on Second Life, they are cheating on you. You generally do not get partnered in SL for fun. If it comes to that, there is something seriously wrong with your relationship.

Don't worry about Ric and his new wife, however. Apparently the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is doing a documentary on the couple, which looks to be so in-depth that he didn't feel the need to follow up with me on the story.

I think the CBC documentary - if they dont fuck us over - will be the only follow-up we need to do

Here's hoping the loving couple stays un-fucked.

My job there is to be a friend to Gore and John, be a resource for them and kick ideas around with them. At the end of the day John's the writer and Gore's the director. I'm not the traffic cop. They've been so respectful of the material and they're fans of the material — neither of these guys have to make any movie, they're both hugely successful in their fields, and for a guy like Gore Verbinski to go and make a Bioshock movie, that's a choice he makes. He's not in a place where he doesn't get to pick what assignments come to him. Same with John. So my job is not to watch over them, it's to say "hey guys, what can I do to help?" We've been talking some and it seems to me that these guys really are the right guys to be doing this.

Let's hope so, Ken. Let's hope so.

Ken Levine interview - Part 1 [OXM]

You’re always going to be worried that in that first meeting they’re going to be, like, ‘OK, it’s Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey on a desert island hunting for pirate treasure,’ but it’s not going to go that way

My expectation at this time, from everything that I’ve heard, is that it will very much honour the dramatic and thematic elements of the game… They certainly understand the material and are able to provide a stamp of their own.

Thank goodness for that. But, now you mention it, that wouldn't be the worst Uncharted movie...

BioShock movie won’t be “Kate Hudson hunting for pirate treasure,” says Levine [VG247]

Move over Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski. Rush Hour franchise helmer Brett Ratner wants to make movies based on video games, too! His interest seems piqued after working on a few ad-type spots for Activision's Guitar Hero. According to Ratner:

The games business is much more exciting than the movie business right now. I will be doing movies that come from video games.

Cue line about Hollywood unable to make good game movies.
Brett Ratner Bows Branding [Variety via Go Nintendo] [Pic]

The biggest film-to-game deal since Peter Jackson's ill-fated Halo movie, the BioShock Universal produced flick will be helmed by Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski. Universal is in talks with Oscar nominated scribe John Logan (The Aviator) to do the script. Verbinski has been talking with BioShock creator Ken Levine on a regular basis about the project, but no word what official capacity he'll take. Verbinski says he plans on making an R-rate film and work will begin once there's a quality script.

About BioShock, Verbinski says, "Of all the games out there, I think Bioshock is the one that's the most engaging. I think the whole utopia-gone-wrong story that's cleverly unveiled to players is brimming with cinematic potential."

BioShock's great and all, but perhaps Verbinski needs to play some more games. He has! Portal, he's played that, and seems to have his eye on turning that into a feature film getting involved in possibly making games: "I hope to make it up to Valve. "Portal" is one of my favorites. For now, it's just an open dialogue about how far we can push this thing."

While we're not entirely convinced Verbinski has the directing chops (Doesn't BioShock need more than just a stylist?), we pretty sure this film is going to open up a floodgates for even more big time Hollywood film adaptations. For better or worse, for better or worse.

Verbinski Interview [Variety]

I'm interested in creating completely new genres. I'm interested in exploring an emotional response to a game, which I haven't really seen. I've seen the visceral adrenaline response, but I haven't really played a game where I feel...tremendous loss... The initial response is that gaming needs good writing. I've heard that. They need screenwriters. Well, hold on a second. Before you jump to that conclusion, I don't want to impose cinema's narrative onto a completely different medium. I think that's naive. The fact that the player is also the audience means you shouldn't be imposing a scenario where the audience is passive. Don't put those rules onto gaming. So out of that came in my mind new forms of narrative. I said, "Well, wait a minute, what if there is zero narrative?"

Verbinski's Game [Los Angeles Times Thanks, hogarth1!] [Pic]

Verbinski attacked the current publisher-developer business model, affirming that "Games are not merchandise." He spoke of his own struggles with game development, saying "With the Pirates of the Caribbean games, the business model killed the potential for something really unique." He explained "I'm not hiding my disappointment, because I know the fanaticism could have driven that world. Five years ago, while adult audiences were dressing up in pirate garb to attend the cinema, I lobbied heavily for an MMOG for Pirates to no avail, because it wasn't in their business plan."

The director blamed publishers for "responding to data and basing creative decisions on existing formulas" and "reacting to a world that is already passing them by", using brown, me-too first person shooters as evidence that the medium could be in danger of becoming sterile, if not for auteur developers who would "make the suits shit themselves" with bold new concepts.

While Verbinski's opening speech was certainly inspiring, probably mostly to rank and file creators who were looking to move beyond the bald space marine stereotype, it would seem that the director of Hollywood fare like The Ring and Mousehunt has large aspirations for game developers.

He did, however, refreshingly point to individual contributors in video game and film development as key factors in realizing the artistic zenith. Game designers, like directors, he said have an obligation to test executives—"You must make execs uncomfortable, whether they know it or not, and believe me, the good ones do"—to make their work "diverge from the path."

While the director may have seemed slightly green in his vision of game development—by his own admission, he's only played a handful of games—his passion for moving the medium forward seemed genuine. He referenced last year's DICE speaker Alex Rigopulos and the team at Harmonix at one point, lauding them for having the gall to convince RedOctane to manufacture plastic guitars to meet the fantasy of standing in front of a mirror with a tennis racket to virtually rock out. "They naysayers completely missed the point," he said, praising the visionaries at Harmonix for convincing investors to make the Guitar Hero series a success.

We certainly appreciated Gore's unbridled enthusiasm. We hope that he'll return at a future date, having learned more about the medium from DICE attendees, from his own experiences and from the experiences of his children, with a better grasp of the realities of video game development. Perhaps he'll have even played some of the genre's best storytelling games and will be able to contribute more to the conversation.

Expect more details from Gore Verbinski's keynote speech and his follow-up Q&A with Newsweek's N'Gai Croal throughout the week.