Hunger Games director to helm Netflix BioShock movie

Netflix announced on Thursday that Francis Lawrence, known for his work on the Hunger Games series and 2005’s I Am Legend, will be directing an adaption of 2007’s BioShock. Logan and Blade Runner 2049 screenwriter Michael Green is also attached to pen the film’s script.

BioShock hardly needs an introduction. Developed in 2007 by Irrational Games (briefly under the name 2K Boston) and 2K Australia, the first-person sci-fi horror shooter placed players in the role of Jack, a man who discovers the city of Rapture, a dystopian Art Deco metropolis at the bottom of the sea inspired by the Objectivist writings of Ayn Rand, after surviving a disastrous plane crash over the Atlantic Ocean. There, Jack must contend with the genetically-altered denizens of the dying city as he searches for a way home.

The game was a critical and commercial hit, going on to inspire two follow-ups in the form of 2010’s BioShock 2 and 2013’s BioShock Infinite, and serving as one of the most iconic games of its generation.

Plans for a live-action BioShock film date as far back as 2008, when the game’s publisher Take-Two Interactive announced that Universal Studios would be producing a movie based on the game directed by Gore Verbinski with a script by John Logan.

That film was confirmed to be canceled in 2017 by Ken Levine, the game’s director, who cited the disappointing commercial turnout of 2009’s Watchmen and Verbinski’s insistence on an “R” rating, and then Verbinski’s departure, as factors in both his and the studio’s decision to move on from the project.