Gore Verbinski's 'Bioshock' Hits the Budgetary Brakes

A $160 million budget causes understandable concern

By: Brad Brevet
Published: Monday, April 27th 2009 at 12:41 AM

Over the weekend Variety reported the Universal Pictures adaptation of the popular videogame "Bioshock" to be directed by Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy) was put on hold as the studio and the filmmaker set out to find a way to knock a few million off the inflating budget. Variety reports the budget for the feature had ballooned to about $160 million, which put a halt to production which was actually gearing up to begin shooting in Los Angeles.

As much as this sounds like terribly bad news, the Variety article doesn't necessarily paint a grim picture as a move to London in effort to take advantage of tax credits is under consideration as well as a quote from Verbinski saying, "We are evaluating whether [shooting in London] is something we want to do. In the meantime, the film is in a holding pattern."

Variety's Michael Fleming adds that Verbinski and sources at the studio say they are determined to make the pic which was written by John Logan (The Aviator) and takes place in the underwater city Rapture, where a pilot crash-lands near a secret entrance and becomes involved in a power struggle.

The movie is based on the bestselling Take-Two Interactive game and all parties involved say they don't intend for the film to become an aborted effort much like the earlier attempt to bring Microsoft's "Halo" to the bigscreen, which was reportedly canceled when Universal and Fox got cold feet over budget fears.

Verbinski cited Bioshock as one of his reasons for bowing out of directing Pirates of the Caribbean 4, but I don't expect this delay to make him change is mind.

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