BioShock film "still an active thing"

BioShock creator Ken Levine has said a movie based on the world of Rapture is still afloat, despite talks of spiralling budgets and a struggling production.

"It's been a learning experience for us," admitted Levine on the Big O and Dukes Show. "I would say it's still an active thing, and it's still something we're actively talking about and actively working on.

"The movie business is complicated; I can't tell you whether it's going to happen for sure [nor] whether it's not going to happen for sure. But [it's] something we're quite actively discussing and actively working on.

"It's interesting," he added, "because there's such a different set of requirements: if you have a movie that is basically a guy shooting dudes for two hours and nothing else, that's not much of a movie. A game can often just sort of be that (I don't think BioShock is that exactly). In the movie of BioShock, who is Jack? In the game, he was specifically a cipher, right? He was specifically a non-entity. You can't do that in a movie - that's the guy you're following through.

"That's one of the reasons it takes so long: you have to do this transformation from one to the other and honour the original at the same time."

The BioShock film is being produced by Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean series director) and directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadilo (28 Weeks Later). The last we heard, the budget was being cut from "extraordinarily high" to something more appropriate for an "R-rated" underwater horror film.

Levine went on to confirm that the BioShock novel, which he didn't confirm whether he was writing or collaborating on, is also still in the works for an unspecified date. But he'd like you all to know he's also rather busy making a new game.