Netflix and 2K first announced an adaptation of Bioshock way back in 2022, but now the movie’s producer has spilled the tiniest amount of tea about what’s going on with it. The good news? We’re going back to Rapture.
It always seemed likely that the movie would take the first game as its starting point, but of course Irrational’s parting gift to the series was to establish a structure that could handle any number of different stories with a few shared elements (“there’s always a lighthouse” etcetera). Producer Roy Lee has now confirmed in an interview with The Direct that the first game is the inspiration:
“Netflix wants us to keep everything under wraps,” says Lee, before pulling back the curtain the tiniest fraction. “But it’s definitely going to be based on the first Bioshock game.”
Lee was on the promotional circuit for the new Stephen King adaptation The Long Walk, and went on to say that Francis Lawrence will be moving on to direct Bioshock after the next installment of The Hunger Games.
“The Long Walk became a reality because Bioshock was delayed for a little bit where we had to do some more script work,” says Lee. “And so as the script work is being done, we shot The Long Walk, and [Lawrence] was already committed to doing the next Hunger Games movie. And so it’s just waiting for him whenever the Hunger Games is completed, and the script is just being worked on right now.”
Logan writer Michael Green is on script duties. The next Hunger Games movie, which has the charming title Sunrise of the Reaping, is scheduled to release in November 2026. So while the Rapture news is all very exciting, there’ll be a good long wait yet.
But this is undoubtedly the right decision. The fantastical underwater dystopia of Rapture is the first thing I think of with Bioshock, along with elements of the city like the Big Daddies and Little Sisters wandering around. Seeing it for the first time is one of those great gaming moments, and it’ll be great to see how the movie visually reimagines such a setting.
More of a concern might be the game’s plot, as bound-up as it is in questions of player choice and free will. The game’s great trick of course is to make the player complicit in doing what they’re told, and that’s not a theme that translates enormously well to another medium.
Director Lawrence did tell IGN earlier this year that the “tricky” project was now looking good, after a new regime at Netflix slashed the film’s budget in 2024. “It’s a tricky adaptation, so there’s lots of things to figure out and to get right,” said Lawrence. “There’s regime changes at Netflix, and so things stall out and get re-energized and stall out and get re-energized, and I think we’re in a pretty good place, honestly.”
