It was one of last year's most popular, and most critically acclaimed games, and now Bioshock is set for the big screen, with Pirates of the Caribbean's Gore Verbinski set to direct.
For those of you who don't know a first-person shooter from a tequilla shooter, the game has a highly intricate story set in a city built underwater. Our hero, Jack, is a passenger aboard a plane that crashlands in the Atlantic in 1960, and escapes to the city, called Rapture (ironically, as it turns out). There, he discovers the aftermath of a civil war, the products of advanced genetic engineering and some seriously messed up shit.
The game was lauded for its detail, Art Deco design, the moral elements to its game play (in this case, it sometimes pays not to shoot everything in sight) and its general kickass-ness. It's the biggest game-to-movie deal signed since Halo was optioned in 2005, but this time the makers have tried to reach a deal that will ensure it gets made. And they're not setting deadlines - Verbinski hopes to start pre-production as soon as the script is written and approved by all involved, but for once they're announcing a major release without also announcing exactly what time the first screenings will be at your local cinema.
The Aviator's John Logan is in talks to write the script, and suddenly we're wondering if this could be the film that breaks the game-good-film-adaptation-bad rule that has remained so true for so long. After all, if Verbinski can turn a theme park ride into one of the biggest franchises of the decade, what can he do with a game that's as smart as it is popular? Could this break the curse?