Summary
We’ve known for a little while now thata BioShock movie adaptation is in the works at Netflix, but it’s been worryingly long since we’ve had any real updates on how the project has been progressing. Thankfully, the movie’s producer, Roy Lee, recently gave us a long-awaited update on the movie during a panel at San-Diego Comic-Con this week (thanksVariety), though he also brought with him some potentially bad news.
The good news is that it’s still coming. We know how happyNetflixis to cancel ongoing projects if it doesn’t see much promise in them, and the streaming giant clearly sees the upcomingBioShockmovie as valuable to some extent. Unfortunately, the bad news is that it doesn’t see enough value in it to spend the big bucks on it, as it was revealed by Lee during the panel that the movie’s budget has been reduced.
During the panel, Lee claims that the reason for the change in budget is due to the “new regime” at Netflix. In the time betweenthe movie’s announcement back in February 2022and now,Netflix replaced its former film chief Scott Stuber with Dan Lin, who previously worked as a producer on The Lego Movie and It. Lin was hired by Netflix and joined the company back in April 2024, and was pinched by the streaming service before he could become the head of DC Studios.
It appears as though Lin has a much more measured approach to filmmaking compared to his predecessor, and it wouldn’t be all that surprising if a number of other Netflix projects had their budgets slashed following his arrival. However, that does also likely mean that BioShock isn’t being singled out, and a lesser budget and smaller project doesn’t automatically mean the title is doomed.
The new regime has lowered the budgets. So we’re doing a much smaller version. … It’s going to be a more personal point of view, as opposed to a grander, big project.
Unfortunately, that was all the info that Lee had to share about the project at the moment, so we’re still waiting for a release date. We can only speculate right now, thoughwe know a BioShock game is also in development at the moment, withscreenshots leaking earlier this week, so it’s possible that the two could line up to try and capitalize on each other at some point in the future. In any case, we’ll probably be waiting a while before we get proper reveals for either.
