Netflix's Bioshock Movie Is Scaling Back And That Might Be Great

Netflix is changing how it funds its productions, and one of the films impacted by the shift is the upcoming adaptation of the seminal first-person shooter Bioshock. While this is no doubt disappointing for the people bringing the underwater dystopia to the big screen, it may be exactly what this adaptation needs to stand on its own.

During a San Diego Comic-Con panel Thursday, producer Roy Lee revealed that the scale of the Bioshock film had been reduced. As a result, he and director Francis Lawrence are doing a much smaller, more intimate film set in this iconic universe.

“We’re doing a much smaller version,” Lee said, according to Variety. “It’s going to be a more personal point of view, as opposed to a grander, big project.”

According to Lee, Bioshock was one of many Netflix productions to have its budgets slashed after the company’s new film chief Dan Lin pivoted its output strategy to account for a wider range of films with varying budgets. Lin’s new strategy is a big departure from his predecessor Scott Stuber, who embraced securing big stars, auteur directors, and ambitious productions.

Lee said that under Lin, Netflix has even changed how they reward success to something “similar to box office bonuses.”

“It’s a chart: It’s this amount of viewers, you get this amount of compensation in terms of increased back end,” he said. “It motivates the producers to actually do a movie that gets a bigger audience.”

There’s no denying that the spectacle of a big-budget Bioshock movie would be cool. The opening moments of the 2007 video game, in which players see the underwater metropolis for the very first time, remains one of the coolest reveals in the entire medium all these years later. But beyond seeing a director bring the underwater city to film, I can’t imagine how a large budget would serve what’s at the heart of Bioshock as a franchise.

The Bioshock games aren’t lacking in action. There are plenty of firefights and drag-out battles with genetically engineered monstrosities. But the high-octane moments aren’t what made these games special. It has always been their individual stories of terrible, charismatic leaders and how those who follow them suffer. They are broader dissections of how power can corrupt even the most ardent idealists. Its 1960s art-deco-inspired sense of place is a vibe to behold.

Knowing that the creators involved in the Bioshock movie had grandiose plans that they now have to turn away from feels like fans may have dodged a bullet. Much of what makes Bioshock so great (and coincidentally, the elements that are the easiest to expand upon on film) doesn’t need a big budget to accomplish. It needs strong writing, atmosphere, and performances, something a more grounded, focused film can better highlight in an adaptation.

Show me Rapture through the eyes of the people who lived there both before and after its tragic fall. I’d love to see intimate character studies of the people who believed in Andrew Ryan’s grand plan to free mankind from the shackles of state authority and religion. Of the ambitious scientists eager to throw ethics to the wayside in vain pursuit of humanity’s advancement. Delve into what it took to become a person of influence in this Ayn Randian society or the average person’s shock when they find out where the precious resource of ADAM comes from.

These are the stories that the medium of film is best suited to tell in this universe. Not an action-heavy romp, or an ambitious top-down look at Rapture’s fall. The recent Fallout television show proved that telling smaller, character-driven stories within gaming’s many expansive fictions can produce stellar results. And Bioshock’s reduced scale and budget could set up the next great video game adaptation.