Here’s a title for a future installment of Movies That Never Were*: Gore Verbinski’s Bioshock.
Okay, maybe it’s too early to call the time of death on the video game adaptation, but things are not looking good. The project got shelved a few months ago due to ballooning costs. The current status update, obtained by the LA Times, isn’t so promising. The paper talked to Verbinski, and this is what he had to say:
The bottom line is it
has to shoot out of the States for budget reasons and my schedule may
be prohibitive. There’s a great script and a really interesting cast.
It really comes down to the financial model now. Big movies are just
not being shot in the States. I’m weighing whether I can physically go
the U.K. or Australia or one of those other places with a tax rebate for
a year-and-a-half.
That doesn’t sound good. That doesn’t sound like a guy who really wants to go away for a year and a half to get his movie made.
And by the way, Gore, some big movies are being made in the US. Iron Man 2 is shooting right now in California, and Land of the Lost, which opens this weekend, filmed in LA!
* Volume 3 coming soon! I just have to finish reading the script to an unmade Spielberg alien movie and it’ll be coming your way.