Gore Verbinski talks about the cancelled Bioshock movie

It's been close to eight years since Gore Verbinski (known for The Ring, Pirates of the Caribbean, Rango, and more) announced that he was working on a Bioshock movie. Unfortunately, it didn't take long before it became obvious that the project was in trouble and had been cancelled. Now he's ready to tell us why.

In an Ask Me Anything (AMA) post on Reddit Verbinski had this to say when someone asked him to elaborate what happened:

"Well it's no short answer to that question but we were eight weeks prior shooting when the plug was pulled. It's an R rated movie. I wanted to keep it R rated, I felt like that would be appropriate, and it's an expensive movie. It's a massive world we're creating and it's not a world we can simply go to locations to shoot. "A Cure For Wellness", we were able to really utilize a variety of location to create the world. "Bioshock" it wouldn't work like that, we'd be building an entire underworld universe. So I think the combination of the price tag and the rating, universal just didn't feel comfortable ultimately."

However, there's still hope if you really want to see what a Bioshock movie would look like, as he ends his statement with:

"At that time also there were some R rated, expensive R rated movies that were not working. So I think things have changed and maybe there will be another chance, but it's very difficult when you're eight weeks away from shooting a movie you really can see in your head and you've almost filmed the entire thing, so emotionally you're right at that transition from architect to becoming a contractor and that will be a difficult place to get back to."

So it would seem that Verbinski isn't all that keen to work on it himself, but at least he believes a Bioshock movie stands a chance nowadays.

Do you think Bioshock is the kind of game that would make for a great movie, or should movie directors stay away from our most precious video games?