The Energon Pub

Most people here are probably aware of the huge Xbox 360 hit game called Bioshock that came out many months ago and last night I was watching the show "Attack of the show" on the G4 network and on the ticker at the bottom of the screen they mentioned that there was talk of making it into a movie!

we all know the history of video games that become movies and most of them are pretty damn bad but I think this would be a great idea for Bioshock.

It would have to be a heavily done CGI movie as the sets would be too enormous and expensive to build full scale in the real world but that's true of most sci fi / fantasy movies anyway.

The game for those that may not have seen it is very art deco stylized and the look of the environments was very much like the movie "Blade Runner" particulary towards the end of Blade Runner, a classic sci fi movie and I got the special edition with five different versions of the movie for christmas, a GREAT dvd set and you should pick it up.
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN ... /ref=nosim

Here is a link to the Bioshock game http://www.2kgames.com/bioshock/enter.html for screen shots and movies however the screen shots do not do the game justice so look at the "movies" as well in the "Enter Rapture" section below the screen shots area.

I actually wanted to talk about if this is made into a movie who should be the lead actor ?

I thought about this pretty hard last night as it really interested me as a movie but I think they need to keep it very true to what we saw in the game to keep the authenticity and look of it, it's not like Transformers where there have been 25 years of different stories, characters and even different series to keep faithful to so that should be easy to do from the start.

As far as a lead actor to play the hero of the film I mulled this around for some time and I thought of a lot of good actors, the usual suspects of Matt Damon and a whole slew of other well known names but ultimately I decided on actor Ben Browder,
here's his IMDB link http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0112871/

I think he'd make a great lead / hero type as he was in one of my favorite scifi shows ever and that was "Farscape", his character thrust into the Farscape setting would work well as the hero in Bioshock was thrust into the undersea city of "Rapture" and his sometimes bizarre sense of style and humor would work well in the under water city.

I would also recommend Phillip Seymour Hoffman http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000450/ for Bioshock the movie but he'd have to play one of the wacky residents in the city of Rapture as he knows how to play wacky.

My last recommendation for a male character would have to be Brad Douriff http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000374/ now here's a guy who really knows how to play bizarre characters, the original 1984 movie Dune, A few episodes of Star Trek Voyager, Lord of the rings the two towers and Return of the king.

Now as far as female characters there are some young girls that the "creatures" known as "Big daddies" protect, I'm not up on too many really young actresses around the age of ten these days except for Dakota Fanning
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0266824/
and I think she'd be a great choice for the lead roll of the "innocent little girl" I forget what they were called in the game as a friend is currently borrowing it from me.

There are other lead female characters but older so I'm not sure who I'd want yet, there are rolls of scientist types for the most part so they'd probably have to be in their 30's or older, maybe Angelina Jolie http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001401/ she was great in "Beowulf" and it was awesome in Imax.

If you have any thoughts on other female or even male leads or about the concept in general well then start posting away.

1. A Male actor wouldn't matter. Jack Ryan lacks any dialogue, and his face is only ever seen very briefly. (If at all, putting him in the ranks of Silent Heroes like Gordon Freeman)

2. For the Little Sisters, they could hire a casting call where ever it's being made.

3. A female lead also wouldn't matter. Tennenbaum is never met with face-to-face, and you only have contact with her over short-wave radio. (Where she has a thick Eastern European Accent)

4. "Wacky" residents? I wouldn't call Splicers wacky. Mentally disturbed, super-powered drug addicts is a much better term.

5. Andrew Ryan: Anthony Hopkins. I doubt he'd do it, but that's my pick.

6. Bioshock is very hard to adapt. The story is told mostly through audio logs (Which would break up the action). But more than that, how do you think the MPAA and theaters would treat a movie where the majority of characters basically inject super-power-inducing heroin?

Lead actors and actresses are important as what is one of the first things people ask about a movie, "well who's in it ?" , next is usually "what's it about ? "

There will always be differences in source material whether it comes from a book, an existing tv show or in this case a video game and just because we never see him face to face for 99.9% of the video game the movie could and should be changed to a perspective like that otherwise it would be a blair witch docudrama and personally I thought the blair witch was very over rated.

It could be filmed with lead actors and actresses without the need for high priced actors and actresses but who do have recognizable names or at least to the target audience and that is primarily sci fi / fantasy film goers.


As far as the term wacky well it does apply as it means crazy,irrational and eccentric but that's just one word to describe them so the term you used was just a remixed version of the word wacky and it's not like it has to be used in any dialog to describe them in the movie.

Ratings ? well just remember that Transformers got an R rating to begin with but power and influence changed that as Spielberg went and had a little chat with the MPAA but if it got an R rating then how many theaters do you know that check, really check the id's of every movie goer that looks under 17 if they are not accompanied by an adult ?

I was asked my age once when I was younger and the only time in my life while trying to get into an R rated movie and I told the truth, I said I was 15 and they still let me in. Try and sneak popcorn in and they'll call the office of homeland security on anyone quicker than if they were just underage.

Anthony Hopkins is a great actor and yes a good choice too but if he liked the roll and lets all be honest if the money was halfway decent he'd do it, they're not doing it just for the union scale pay.

It's a risk, yes a big risk despite the success of the game and more so than a lot of people were saying about Transformers but I just have visualizations of art deco and blade runner type environments that I think would look great on the big screen.

I would rather see partial sets made rather than all CGI / blue screen but it would still have to be heavy in CGI.

Thanks for the input.

Somehow I just don't see a Bioshock movie working that well. The concept sounds great on paper, but I cannot foresee a good execution of any type for the movie. Perhaps the events prior to the arrival of Jack would be better suited for the big screen. Sort of a prequel to Bioshock, one that explains the coming about of certain events, like the creation of the big daddies, or the little sisters, or even the new years eve incident where everything went to hell and rapture's residents just went bat **** insane.

As much as I love the game, I don't want to see this made into a movie. It would be hard to capture the feelings you get while playing the game. Just look how the Doom movie turned out. In my opinion, great games should stay games.

Tweezy wrote:Somehow I just don't see a Bioshock movie working that well. The concept sounds great on paper, but I cannot foresee a good execution of any type for the movie. Perhaps the events prior to the arrival of Jack would be better suited for the big screen. Sort of a prequel to Bioshock, one that explains the coming about of certain events, like the creation of the big daddies, or the little sisters, or even the new years eve incident where everything went to hell and rapture's residents just went bat **** insane.

Good concept. Starts with Andrew Ryan beginning Rapture, then does a fast forward, through the introduction of ADAM and EVE, and into the Rapture Wars. I can see three stories being told, with Fontaine and Ryan both playing opposing Antagonist roles, and some of the movie following Tennenbaum's and Suchong's research into plasmids, and the creation of Jack Ryan. The movie would probably culminate in Jack Ryan's programming before sending him to the surface, and the New Year's Massacre going on at the same time, along with the suicide of Chief Sullivan, and the apparent death of Fontaine. Although, for those who didn't play the game, this would become something of a spoiler.

The second movie could follow the game, with a few changes: The beginning of the movie shows Jack (Who is not yet revealed to BE Jack) boarding plane, with a gift from a "relative" in Britain. It shows him sitting on the plane, and he reads the card, but fades quickly (The only audible words he says are "Would you kindly..."), to an exterior shot of the plane, which suddenly explodes. There is then a "Spider-Man 2" style credits, detailing the events of the first movie. Atlas wouldn't be on-screen until half-way into the movie (When he reveals he's Fontaine). Jack refuses to use Plasmids, but reluctantly uses them when Tennebaum helps remove his programming. The movie then follows the game as closely as possible.

And...well, it'd be hard to give the game a sequel...

Grahf wrote:As much as I love the game, I don't want to see this made into a movie. It would be hard to capture the feelings you get while playing the game. Just look how the Doom movie turned out. In my opinion, great games should stay games.

That's about how I'd see it. Despite the fact that I liked Doom, they did nearly everything right environmentally & even had most of the basic monsters, but even still it kinda irks me (& most considered it unacceptable) that they changed it from the monsters from Hell taking over Mars & eventually Earth angle of the games to a standard movie-type genetic zombies/monsters angle with a couple of "this place is a figurative but not actual hell" references inserted into the dialog.

Nemesis Cyberplex wrote:monsters from Hell taking over Mars & eventually Earth

Why does nobody remember that the first game didn't take place on Mars? It takes place on it's two moons!

Shadowman wrote:

Nemesis Cyberplex wrote:monsters from Hell taking over Mars & eventually Earth

Why does nobody remember that the first game didn't take place on Mars? It takes place on it's two moons!

Who says I didn't remember? But it is rather clear from the various scenarios in the movie that it was based off of Doom 3, which did take place on Mars, not Phobos or Demois(sp?).

Further news has surfaced regarding the BioShock movie and with the help of universal studios and the choice of director Gore Verbinski ( for now anyway )

The brief list of material out there for info regarding this movie project is met with a lot of cynical responses but at the same time understandable with the history of the video game to movie transfers.

If done right, I know, words all too often said, this could be great or at least the vision I have in my head regarding it but if you're interested please read my very first post on this subject over again.

The article lists our favorite director Uwe Boll as working on the Resident Evil series of movies but I checked IMDB and saw nothing to the effect but that explains why they are relatively successful then if he was not involved...was that out loud ?

Friday, May 09, 2008 6:31 AM PT Posted by Matt Peckham
BioShock the Movie: Sister, Can You Spare a Mutagen?

http://blogs.pcworld.com/gameon/archives/006921.html

Joy of joys, and I mean that in every sense of the double entendre, it looks like BioShock's set to receive the silver screen treatment. Variety reports Universal and director Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean, The Ring, and that daffy Home-Alone-with-mice Nathan Lane comedy) are shortly to embark on production of a movie version of Ken Levine's brilliantly disturbing underwater opus with a possible screenplay nod to Sweeney Todd scribe John Logan.

Verbinski claims the mechanical Big Daddies (pictured here) in particular allowed him to see the game as a film.

http://blogs.pcworld.com/gameon/images/ ... _daddy.jpg

Variety says Take-Two is getting a ton of scratch up front in what's supposed to be the biggest videogame-to-movie handoff since Universal and Fox passed Microsoft $5 million for Halo in 2005. About the Halo movie... You probably heard it train wrecked a while back and that it's currently with Microsoft looking for a new distributor? The Take-Two cash infusion = designed to prevent that.

"The reason I structured it the way I did is to make sure it gets made," said Take-Two executive chairman Strauss Zelnick.

Amen, as long as Universal and Verbinski don't screw it up. And there's plenty of reason to think they might. No one's yet done a decent job translating a video game to film. No one. You can almost make a case for Final Fantasy: Advent Children, but that's a totally niche creature. And let's be honest, it's only been recently that games have started delivering stories written and produced in a way that's (almost) up to filmic and literary snuff quality-wise. Speaking about games as cinematic, anyway. I love games, love them quite appropriately for reasons that have nothing to do with their cinematic qualities, and once I do start thinking about them in filmic terms, have no illusions about their general puerility.

But it doesn't have to be that way, and it's plain as the nose on anyone's face. Like I said yesterday, all it takes to keep a good thing down is a real determination to fund the crappiest directors and screenwriters on the planet. If you want video-games-as-films to languish, keep buying tickets or even just renting Uwe Boll's Resident Evil and Bloodrayne and Alone in the Dark sequels. I guarantee you'll get more of the same, just like all of us who went to see Roland Emmerich's Independence Day in droves pretty much ensured there'd be a Godzilla and The Day After Tomorrow and 10,000 BC. Was anyone really surprised by how bad those were? Broom off your nostalgia cobwebs. Now does anyone think Independence Day was really any better?

"Dude. Popcorn flick. Clue. As in get one." Don't I know it. And to be totally fair, don't I know it'd be nice to have a video game movie at least as good as a Roland Emmerich dramedy.

"A man chooses, a slave obeys," opines the game's hyper-capitalist morals-monger. When it comes to writing, casting, filming, and editing this thing, let's hope Verbinski and Universal opt to choose wisely, now would they kindly?

Personally, I wouldn't want the movie just to be a retelling of the game.

I mean why bother hearing that story all over again?

I want to see Rapture in all it's under-the-sea glory. The utopia society, Atlas squaring off against Ryan, and then the @#$% hitting the fan with the huge downfall of the society in Rapture.

The creation of the little sisters, the big daddies being sent in to deal with a riot over adam.

That would rock.

Shadowman wrote:And...well, it'd be hard to give the game a sequel...

I was wrong. EGM has a rumor about Bioshock 2 and how it's likely going to be announced in September.

Nifty.

I could have sworn there was something about the BioShock movie, but it looks like there wasn't.

Shadowman wrote:

Shadowman wrote:And...well, it'd be hard to give the game a sequel...

I was wrong. EGM has a rumor about Bioshock 2 and how it's likely going to be announced in September.

Nifty.

I could have sworn there was something about the BioShock movie, but it looks like there wasn't.

There is some news as I posted above...here is an excerpt "Joy of joys, and I mean that in every sense of the double entendre, it looks like BioShock's set to receive the silver screen treatment. Variety reports Universal and director Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean, The Ring, and that daffy Home-Alone-with-mice Nathan Lane comedy) are shortly to embark on production of a movie version of Ken Levine's brilliantly disturbing underwater opus with a possible screenplay nod to Sweeney Todd scribe John Logan.

Verbinski claims the mechanical Big Daddies in particular allowed him to see the game as a film."


I know there was not much out there on the net but it was just surfacing on the news again.

Most of the stories out there had little info on it at this point.