As the streaming wars stretch ever onward, the world’s biggest streamers are in a desperate race to snatch up fresh properties.
Following the consistent success of adaptations, Netflix appears determined to lead the pack when it comes to video game adaptations. Unfortunately, the majority of video game adaptations end up bombing spectacularly, which is perhaps why most studios have lost faith in them.
The release of Netflix’s Arcane may have changed all that. The stellar series offers up a fresh and captivating spin on existing lore from League of Legends, and—while it does depart from the source material—it pulls it off spectacularly. The resulting series is arguably the best video game adaptation ever made, and it provides hope to gamers who long ago wrote off any hope that a worthy adaptation would ever do their favorite title’s justice.
Netflix once again has its sights set on a popular video game property. Word is spreading that the streaming giant aims to create a Bioshock movie, but will the film be based around the popular games?
Is Netflix’s Bioshock based on the games?
Netflix’s upcoming film is intended as an adaptation of 2K Boston’s 2007 video game of the same name. The retrofuturistic title spawned a genre-crossing franchise, and remains one of the most popular video games out there. It persists on many gamer’s top ten lists.
The Bioshock film will take viewers into Rapture, a long-abandoned underwater city in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The sprawling city was intended as a utopia for the world’s elite, but soon spiraled into war and addiction, and crumbled apart. The walls of Rapture still stand, but the few people that remain exist in a city that is a far cry from its pristine intentions.
This is the setting of the upcoming Bioshock film, which aims to bring 1940s-themed Rapture to the small screen. Word is still out on if the game’s protagonist, Jack, is set to appear in the film, but chances seem good. The question of the game’s ending is also up in the air, as fans wonder whether Netflix will go the good route or the bad. The game offers up two different endings based on the player’s actions throughout its runtime, and fans are already curious if Netflix will take a similar route. If not, chances are good that audiences will get the better of the two endings, if only because it’s difficult to imagine many viewers rooting for a man who kills little girls.
Bioshock is headed to Netflix in the next several years, with Francis Lawrence of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire fame tapped to direct, and writer Michael Green—known for Logan and Death on the Nile—set to throw his creative talent behind the live-action film.
