You may not remember, but in early 2022, Netflix and 2K jointly announced that the “BioShock” movie was brought back from the dead and was in active development. Later that year, we learned that Francis Lawrence (of “I Am Legend” and “The Hunger Games” fame) would be directing. Now, that’s looking increasingly unlikely.
Until recently, Lawrence has been open about the project and what his hopes and goals are for it, but once we see his increasingly crowded schedule, we’re not convinced he’ll be the filmmaker heading for Ecstasy. We do hope, though, that famed scribe Michael Green (Logan, Blade Runner 2049) remains on board.
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Via Deadline , we learned that the long-in-progress big-screen adaptation of Stephen King’s “The Long Walk” has finally begun filming, with Lawrence as director. After that, it is said that he will stay in Panem to film the next “Hunger Games” prequel, which will be the fifth film in the long-running series that he has directed. In fact, only the first “Hunger Games” was directed by someone else.
These projects alone greatly reduce the likelihood that Netflix’s BioShock will happen anytime soon with him at the helm, but that’s not all. He also has two recent sequels to his past work currently brewing: I Am Legend 2, which for some strange reason will continue from an alternate ending that wasn’t in the original’s final cut, and Constantine 2 , starring Keanu Reeves. Mind you, both of these sequels could have flopped at any time, but they seem more like personal projects for Lawrence than making BioShock a gun-for-hire.
Bioshock isn’t the only game-to-movie/TV project that Netflix is currently struggling with. While the streaming giant has a slew of video game adaptations, big bets like Gears of War and Horizon Zero Dawn have run into trouble. Meanwhile, HBO’s The Last of Us and Prime Video’s Fallout are in the lead, suggesting that big-budget shows may be the best bet for adapting most video game worlds and stories.
