[Movies] Was The Bioshock Movie Canceled Because Of Watchmen?
Posted by Joseph Lee on 03.12.2013
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While at a BAFTA event in London last night, Ken Levine told Edge Online why he canceled the Bioshock movie that had a $200 million budget and Gore Verbinski directing.
He said: "There was a deal in place and it was actually in production at Universal, and Gore Verbinski was directing it. And what happened was – this is my theory – it's a very big movie and Gore was very excited about it and he wanted to make a very dark, what he would call a ‘hard-rated' horror film – an R rated film with a lot of blood. Then The Watchmen came out – and I really liked The Watchmen – but it didn't do well for whatever reason and the studio got cold feet about making an R rated $200 million film. So they said, ‘Gore, what about it if it was an $80 million film?' and enough time had gone by where Gore didn't want to make an $80 million dollar film. And so they brought another director in and I didn't really see the match there – Take Two is one of those companies that gives a lot of trust to their creative people and so they said to me, ‘if you want to kill it Ken, kill it'. And I killed it. Which was weird, having been a screenwriter going around begging to re-write any script to being in a position where you're killing a movie that you worked so much on. It was saying, "You know what? I don't need to compromise'. I had the [Bioshock] world, and I didn't what to see it done in a way I didn't think was right."
At the event, he was talking about his career in games so far and his vision for the next Bioshock game, Bioshock Infinite.
