Netflix Partners With 2K and Take-Two to produce a Live-Action Film Adaptation
In a release from Netflix just days ago, it was confirmed that the streaming studio giant is partnering with 2K and Take-Two Interactive to produce a live-action film adaptation of Bioshock. With Vertigo Entertainment and Take-Two serving as producers.
For those unfamiliar as to why this is such a big deal, Bioshock is considered one of the greatest games of all-time. Featuring a pool of talented developers who’d influenced multi-generational periods of gaming across the industry (beginning with System Shock and arguably ending with Bioshock Infinite).
Originally led by a team guided by creative director Ken Levine, who is considered one of the last big ‘Do whatever you want you creative genius’ sort of talents in the gaming industry, the games: Bioshock, BioShock 2, and BioShock Infinite redefined the dystopian science fiction genre. With visionary takes at an Ayn Rand metropolis/art deco society gone awry.
The original BioShock was a story about Jack, a mysterious plane crash survivor. Jack had found an underwater world filled of genetic enhancement, mutated humans in diving suits, tiny little sisters, and the incredibly horrifying Big Daddies. All for a horror adventure story that featured one of gaming’s greatest twists of all time.
Driving it all, was a horror/science fiction first-person shooter experience set in an impossible city in the sea named Rapture. A place whose inhabitants sought escape from society in a very Atlas Shrugged kind of way where industry and capitalism had gone awry. It was a game that questioned 19th-century industrialization. It sold more than 39 million copies and provided one of the most brilliant twists in science fiction possibilities in terms of gaming, “Would you kindly, care to comply”…
Originally a project in developmental hell for the past decade, it was Netflix that revived the hopes of the adaption. Not only is Netflix at the moment the world’s biggest studio in terms of subscribers, Hollywood accolades, and talent pools, but they’re also the most successful Video Game to TV/Movie studio. With Resident Evil, Defense of the Ancients, League of Legends, and of course, The Witcher, under the helm of successful adaptations.
