Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski was going to direct a big-screen version of BioShock. But, the picture fell apart. Verbinski now says why.
"I couldn't really get past anybody that would spend the money that it would take to do it and keep an R rating," Verbinski tells ComingSoon.net. "Alternately, I wasn't really interested in pursuing a PG-13 version." That's because, the director says, the R-rating is inherent to the material — "Little Sisters and injections and the whole thing."
"I just wanted to really, really make it a movie where, four days later, you're still shivering and going, 'Jesus Christ!'," he continues. "It's a movie that has to be really, really scary, but you also have to create a whole underwater world, so the pricetag is high. We just didn't have any takers on an R-rated movie with that pricetag."
Verbinski even hoped to shoot the flick in 3D, adding, "I'd like to go into that world wearing a pair of glasses." The director thinks that gaming in general is perfect for 3D. "Anything where you're the protagonist," he says. "The kid in The Shining on the big wheel, going around corridors. That's what 3D is perfect for. To make people feel on-edge."
Last June, Verbinski stressed the importance of an R-rating for the flick, saying he didn't want to "dumb" anything down. And when things appeared to be stalling, the director even looked at filming outside the U.S. "Big movies are just not being shot in the States," he told the LA Times.
By the summer's end, Verbinski was no longer attached as director, shifting to the producer role and handing director duties off to Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Intacto, 28 Weeks Later). "I can't tell you whether - you know, the movie business is complicated - I can't tell you whether it's going to happen for sure or it's not going to happen for sure," BioShock creator Ken Levine said at the time. "But it's something we are actively discussing, quite actively, and actively working on."
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