Netflix has announced that it has partnered with Take-Two Interactive and 2K to start work on an adaptation of the video game franchise Bioshock. A project as expected as it is feared, as the latter is sacred to the players.
Long evoked in Hollywood, the project of a film Bioshock will eventually be brought to fruition by Netflix. The streaming platform announced the project on Twitter, citing a deal with Take-Two Interactive and 2K to produce an adaptation of “the famous video game franchise” by Ken Levine. If we take these terms literally, this means that the Los Gatos firm would not only be interested in the first part, but in the complete saga: Bioshock, Bioshock 2 and Bioshock Infinite. The logo posted alongside the announcement, however, is that of the first episode.
Netflix, 2K and Take-Two Interactive are teaming up to produce a film adaptation of the acclaimed BioShock video game franchise.
Stay tuned. ?
— Netflix France (@NetflixFR) February 15, 2022
It is therefore once again Netflix which recovers the rights to a project long considered too expensive and risky by the film industry. We can only hope that the SVoD service will choose the team responsible for producing this (these) film(s) wisely. With its gloomy atmosphere, its confusing story and its abundant universe, the saga Bioshock already offers a solid material to adapt. But making the grandiose and tortured steampunk cities of Rapture and Columbia plausible on screen will clearly not be an easy task.
Underwater city or flying city
As a reminder, Bioshock the first and second of the name take place in the 1960s, in the heart of a utopian underwater city built on principles combining scientific supremacy and limitless art. We follow the epic of the only survivor of a plane crash who evolves in this deadly setting populated by mutants and other strange characters.
Infinity, meanwhile, moves the plot this time far above the clouds, to a floating city ruled by a prophet who worships America’s founding fathers and who has established a racist and elitist system. The protagonist, this time, was a private detective named Booker DeWitt, searching for a young woman who had been missing for 15 years and was being held prisoner on Columbia.