BioShock movie director Francis Lawrence says the adaptation is “a tough nut to crack”

So, Bioshock—yes, that Bioshock movie everyone’s been waiting for since roughly the dawn of time—isn’t dead yet. I know, I can barely believe it myself. Despite a truly heroic stint in what Americans love to call “development hell”, director Francis Lawrence claims things are finally starting to move. His words, not mine. Personally, I’ll believe it when I see the Big Daddy stomp onto a screen that isn’t my TV.

Can Bioshock Ever Escape Development Hell?

Lawrence spoke to The Direct recently, where he didn’t sugarcoat the state of the project. Turns out, adapting a game where you are the main character into an actual film with a lead people care about? Absolute nightmare. And that’s before you factor in the “bats**t” world of Rapture—his words again, and fair play, it’s not exactly Notting Hill.

Here’s what Lawrence told The Direct about the current state of the movie: "It is a tough nut to crack that world and that story, especially because it’s… I mean, you are the character when you play the game, and so creating that character from scratch into that world that, you know, quite honestly, is pretty bats**t in a most amazing way. It’s tricky. So we’re getting there, and we’re getting close, which is great."

So, progress—but don’t put the champagne on ice just yet. There’s an extra layer of chaos thanks to Netflix, who still hold the rights. If you haven’t kept up: Netflix’s exec team is now playing musical chairs, with Dan Lin (former Head of Film) and Bele Bajaria (former Chief Content Officer) both out. That sort of “regime change”, as Lawrence politely describes it, tends to stall just about anything that isn’t already printing cash.

Lawrence commented on the Netflix situation as well: "And then, you have also just the Netflix of it all because Netflix right now has had regime changes and just all of that kind of nonsense that I don’t like to have to deal with or have to. So we’ll see. Hopefully we’ll figure it out."

To recap, the Bioshock movie has been in the works, in some shape, since 2008. The original plan had Gore Verbinski (yes, Pirates of the Caribbean Gore Verbinski) attached as director, with John Logan on script duty. That fell apart, Verbinski walked away a few years in, and everything went very, very quiet.

Bioshock's first film adaptation was announced back in 2008 and hasn't made it to screens yet.

What’s Francis Lawrence Actually Doing Next?

All scepticism aside, Lawrence does have a full dance card. While he’s still apparently “active” with the script for Bioshock, he’s also jumping aboard Red Rising over at Paramount. If you’ve not read Pierce Brown’s best-selling series, think Roman mythology with sci-fi meets colour-coded space classes, set on Mars. The lead, a miner named Darrow from the lowest class (the Reds), gets radical after losing his love and discovering the dystopian nightmare he’s stuck in. His big goal? Infiltrate the Golds—the society’s top dogs—and take it all down from the inside.

• Bioshock – Script in the works, Netflix rights, nearly two decades of false starts
• Red Rising – Greenlit at Paramount, Lawrence directing, based on Pierce Brown’s popular books
• The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping – Lawrence’s other big project, slated for cinemas 20 November 2027

So, yes, Bioshock may eventually see the light of day—assuming Netflix sorts itself out, Lawrence has time between dystopias, and the script finally works out what to do with all those splicers.