Francis Lawrence to Direct Netflix’s ‘BioShock,’ Michael Green to Adapt

The Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence is set to direct the live-action adaptation of BioShock for Netflix.

Screenwriter Michael Green (Logan, Blade Runner 2049, Death on the Nile) will pen the screenplay that brings the popular video game franchise to the big screen. Netflix is partnering with 2K and Take-Two Interactive to produce BioShock the film. Variety was the first to report Lawrence and Green’s involvement.

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Developed by Irrational Games and published by 2K, a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive Software, the BioShock game franchise includes BioShock, BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite.

Released in 2007, BioShock is a first-person shooter set in a crumbling underwater city named Rapture, its society fragmented in a civil war, with many inhabitants addicted to a genetic enhancement serum that gives them superhuman powers while also living in fear of Big Daddies, mutated humans who have been grafted into diving suits. Into this world is dropped the game’s protagonist, Jack, a survivor of a mysterious plane crash in the Atlantic Ocean.

Netflix is banking on a global audience, with the BioShock franchise having sold more than 39 million copies worldwide. The next installment is currently in development by Cloud Chamber.

Producers on the Netflix movie adaptation include Roy Lee for Vertigo Entertainment and Lawrence for about:blank, while Cameron MacConomy and Strauss Zelnick will executive produce.

Video game adaptations have done very well for Netflix, none better perhaps than The Witcher (the video game series is itself an adaptation of the Witcher novels by Andrzej Sapkowski). A fantasy series fronted by Henry Cavill, it’s one of the top-rated titles on the streaming platform and has a spinoff and an anime movie in the works.

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