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R-Rating Sunk BioShock Movie Plans
Back in 2008, it was announced that BioShock would be getting a movie adaptation. Those plans never really materialized, and director Gore Verbinski has now explained why:
"I couldn't really get past anybody that would spend the money that it would take to do it and keep an R rating. Alternately, I wasn't really interested in pursuing a PG-13 version. Because the R rating is inherent. Little Sisters and injections and the whole thing. I just wanted to really, really make it a movie where, four days later, you're still shivering and going, 'Jesus Christ!' It's a movie that has to be really, really scary, but you also have to create a whole underwater world, so the price tag is high. We just didn't have any takers on an R-rated movie with that price tag."
sounds awesome
How about we each give the guy $10 and proceed to pirate the movie off tpb when it's done? Wouldn't it be just?
If the filmmaker only would've started his sentence with "would you kindly", he would've got unconditional support for making the movie
Join the TWIT army now!
Why the fuck would it matter? Bioshock's rated M, or 18+, or any other multitude of Adult Only, depending on region. When the game did so well with the rating, why wouldn't anyone think a film would? Wait, it's members of the MPAA we're discussing here. Not exactly the sharpest tacks, yeah?
.... from a director called "Gore" ?
(tssss-plasssh!)
And an excellent one that it.
I never understood why the 'R' rating is such a big deal in America.
So you're not supposed to watch them until you're 17 unless accompanied by an adult.
In the UK being an '18' (the same thing but with 18, rather than 17 as the age) is nothing to worry about at the box office.
your buggy captchas suck, i wont even try to re-post.
You're suggesting that pirates pay for that which they are to pirate?
:)
You, sir, have contradicted yourself.
Nevertheless, I like your idea
Sure, if you could get 3~5 million other like-minded people to fork over 10 bucks, sight unseen, with no guarantee that the movie would be any good, or even completed within a couple year's time. ($50M production cost seems like a good ballpark for a movie of this type.) And you'd pretty much have to put up this money all at once. Big movies can't be made piecemeal, assembling actors and technicians, negotiating with unions, renting out sets... these are complicated tasks.
Maybe you'd have an easier time finding fewer people willing to contribute more money upfront. Maybe some of them want contracts stipulating when the movie must be delivered. Maybe you'd get more donations if you promise that, should the movie make a profit somehow, that it would be shared amongst everyone. Perhaps some of the investors may feel that the movie would have a better chance of returning a profit if it had a marketing budget, and reach the widest number of viewers possible.
Hello, new corporate movie studio.
Great use of suspense, menace, and inference. A pretty sinister film, with drug references, violence, and and an antagonist who creeps the hell out of you.
Not a single drop of blood or curse word = 12A in the UK. Quite a feat, that. I guess this director just isn't up to that standard. Probably shouldn't be making the film.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Put the screenplay online. Build up the storyboard as a wiki. Get some volunteers to build the CGI underwater world. Unknown actors in the parts. Donations of movie equipment. etc.
If people need paying then offer them a share of any distribution deals that come out at the end.
Oh, if this does happen then let me know as I would happily have a bash at the score.
[Intentionally left blank]
Oh, and I hope I'm not coming across as dismissive of your idea; it would be great if it worked. It's just not likely to work across the board, and it probably would succumb to the same problems of the big studios/Hollywood: this sort of "democracy" is often not conducive to art. Big movies are group efforts, and they require big financial backing, which is also a group effort. I can't foresee how individual contributors would behave any different from movie studio shareholders.
Instead, what is needed is a financially independent movie studio run by someone with vision. Which typically isn't compatible with big movies.
How about we each pledge money for a possible share in the profits? If it doesn't reach $50m or $75m or whatever it takes to do the film justice, no-one pays and it doesn't get made. If it gets made and doesn't make a profit, we don't get the money but we do get a kick-ass Bioshock movie and the knowledge we contributed. Crowd-sourced movie funding on a massive scale.
If 500,000 people pledged $200 each or 1,000,000 people pledged $100, it would have a budget of $100m, which is 6 times the budget of Brazil, twice the budget of The One which had Jet Li in it, fighting copies of himself, more than twice the budget of Sin City and only half of what James Cameron needed for Titanic/Avatar.
I would be in the front of the queue.
"embiggen"... what a perfectly cromulent word.
BTW, GrumblyStuff has AIDS.
OK, having now read the fine article, the budget that the studio asked to be cut, was $160m, but the point stands.1,600,000 donating $100 or 800,000 donating $200.
(Incidentally, $10 is silly money because it would take 16 million people to get the movie made, which is doubtful, and to get people to donate more than that, they need more inducement than "you can have a free copy of the movie". )
Uwe Boll!
Uwe Boll!
Uwe Boll!
(at very least, they could've adopted his tactics to get funding)
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
yup watch as they now go down the slope
Fuck'em
Why not copy what The Tunnel movie did and have people pay $1 per frame. They also randomly choose a frame, and the owner of that frame gets %1 of any money they make.
Certainly a fun way to get involved in a movie creation.
Would it be possible to donate cycles from individual PCs to help render scenes, similar to the SETI project ? That would cut costs dramatically.
Uh so 100 people buying 100 frames means those people combined get 100% of the profits?
Of course if they use Hollywood accounting the movie never makes any profit, so they can promise to give out 135000% of the profits but never actually have to pay out anything.
No, only one frame pays out. You're buying a lottery ticket along with your frame: if you get the one luck frame out of 135,000, you get the 1%.
who here believes that it would do better if it was rated M?
Technically he's suggesting bypassing the big publishing and distribution companies.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
You misunderstand; it's a lottery. 135,000 people each pick a frame. One frame is chosen after shooting, and that frame's owner gets 1% of the profits.
I propose a movie about a middle manager who gets captured and experimented on! Excise his overactive caution brain centers!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Try watching 'swimming with sharks'. A young movie exec gets fed up with being treated like nothing so kidnaps and tortures his boss, one of the big time movie producers. A good watch.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Does anyone know why anyone still bothers to enforce those ratings? If the theaters are so about money why care.
Christopher Nolan probably still has a couple of blank cheques from Warner Brothers lying about.
If there's one person in the world who's entitled to the sweat of his brow, it's the man who makes a movie version of Bioshock. So I'm willing to pay the regular way.
Good for this guy. Better to make nothing at all than release a watered-down piece of shit just to get a PG-13 rating and make the studios happy. All that would do is ruin the reputation of the Bioshock name.
I wish other people in the movie business had the same level of integrity as this guy. I have seen too many adult-themed movies get released that are butchered because they had to go for a PG-13 rating. I wouldn't waste my time watching that tripe even if it didn't cost me any money.
As others have mentioned, this guy should really set up a PayPal account and produce the movie independently. I would gladly donate money for such a project so long as I was promised that the content of the movie would remain as graphic as necessary to properly maintain the themes of the Bioshock story.
Your previous crap still has me scared witless, so you don't have to make any more!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Actually this is essentially how Kickstarter fundraising works, but admittedly on a much larger scale. The budget for the project a deadline for the money to be raised are set and anyyone can pledge money, but no one is actually charged unless the funding goal is reached. If it is, everyone's money is automatically debited; if not, the project has failed to meet its target and none of the backers lose out.
Now, this presupposes that merely raising the $50m will actually guarantee the film gets made - which it doesn't - but with a large number of small backers, the risk to each is limited. And when it's made they all get a free digital version of the finished product. The only guarantee of quality is whatever pre-production artwork and other information can be used to entice people to contribute.
Obviously backers that way are not traditional investors and don't get a share in profits. Instead they have rewards based on their contribution. $30 might get a DVD version of the completed film, $50 the blu-ray, $100 signed artwork, $1000 some set piece memorabilia, etc.
Do I think you can actually, workably scale this kind of idea up to the level of Hollywood film production? Probably not, but it's not entirely ridiculous either.
"Yes, Virginia, there is a Great Cthulhu..."
Because that would make $135,000. What I think the OP was suggesting (and what I definitely was suggesting) was that enough people donating a relatively small amount could finance the whole movie at the budget he was seeking. The budget that Gore (who directed three Pirates of the Caribbean movies) was negotiating with the studio was ~$160m. His argument being that you cannot make a Bioshock movie for less on the grounds that you have to recreate an underwater, art-deco, alternate-history aesthetic with CGI special effects, prosthetics, stunts, etc. The studio seems to be ok with the budget provided he chases a PG-13 rating, which would utterly ruin the story. He did the right thing and said "wtf? no!".
$1 a frame is a fun amount, like buying a lottery ticket with a 1 in 135,000 chance of winning 1% of some number that depends on how good the movie is and how good the production accountants are. If however I were giving a non-trivial amount toward production of a commercial project (as some seem to be on The Tunnel), I'd want a much better chance of getting some of my money back. This Tunnel thing sounds like a scam. $135,000 for a low-budget film, raised by people contributing with the hope of, maybe, seeing 1% of the profits of the movie.(Bearing in mind it will be released via BitTorrent and may never have a theatrical release).
It sounds like someone watched The Producers and thought they'd have a go at it. Low budget Blair Witch in the sewers of Australia? In 2011? Distributed for free, via BitTorrent? Wha?
Scenario 1:
Movie is picked up by a major studio and they want to re-make it (a la The Ring (directed by Gore Verbinski incidentally) etc.), no rights pass to the contributors, they belong to the producers, who make fat coin by selling the rights to the studio. The studio have no obligation to give 1% of the profits to anyone.
Scenario 2:
The movie sees a limited theatrical release/DVD release, covers costs and makes a small "profit". The profit is eaten up by "the costs associated with further exploitation of the movie and other elements of the project"
How about an optional extra charge on retail sales or subscriptions, pay an extra $10 if you want to see the movie made, or a bit less in ongoing payments. By March 2010, BioShock had sold 4 million copies - it's potentially doable. You might not get the full amount but if you only need half what you originally wanted, its much easier to find investors.
Why would the price tag be so high for creating the underwater world? Is he determined not to use CGI environments?
If the budget problems are really the sets. Why not just shoot a R and PG-13 on the same sets? That way they could really see which one made more money too.
Well you're going to need to convince 10 million people to cough up $10 for it before its made.
Good luck with that.
I feel like there is more to this than that little teeny tiny article. The guy wanted to make an underwater city (all the suits thought "Oh no, Waterworld") based on a video game, for $160m. How many Resident Evil movies are there and how many are rated R? They must make money b/c they keep making more R rated movies based on video games. This is all about Gore's ego (he calls it "his vision" in the article). This could probably be made for a lot less like "Captain Sky" or "Sucker Punch" (whose trailer on IMDB is preceded by an ad for Bambi - I kid you not.)
No harm done bro. I enjoy a discussion with fellow slashdotters :) Yeah it's difficult to pull this off but if truly the problem is "only" money, and this dude doesn't seem too shabby directing, I would gladly give $100 towards this fund. The Mexican has a fantastic story, PoTC shows the special fx needed to pull off BioShock's texture. Now all we need is a movement.
I don't know, think I got the idea from One Day on Earth.
Why the fuck would it matter? Bioshock's rated M, or 18+, or any other multitude of Adult Only, depending on region. When the game did so well with the rating, why wouldn't anyone think a film would?
It doesn't matter what the target audience is. Correct me if i'm wrong, but in the US, R-rated movies simply are not offered by most movie theaters, so adults also do not get a chance to see them. And on top of that, walmart and many others are not going to stock the DVD...
I wonder if it would be possible to make a prequel showing the rise and fall of Rapture as a PG-13 blockbuster, opening the way for a proper BioShock movie "sequel."
Yes, I am familiar with Kickstarter, having made a couple contributions to small self-publishing projects (being in a barely-legit publishing enterprise myself, I have sympathy for that sort of thing). It's a great way to connect a few people with very specialized interests, but the feasibility of the idea isn't really what I was getting at directly (it's obviously more difficult to collect $50M). The thing is, I don't see much difference between trying to make a big-budget movie proposal that would get green-lit from a movie studio, or a committee of investors, or a large number of people on the internet. While the motivations may be different, one has to make artistic concessions in all of these cases. Amortization of costs/risks is already at the heart of the modern entertainment industry; instead of a director funding his own movie, he's getting backing from a company, i.e. a plurality with a common goal. Is it really that different from seeking donations, other than dealing with more people? To me, more people equates to greater dilution of ideas.
We can already observe how such democracy affects art. People are voting with their money at the box office, at the store... and people chose Transformers 2 and Justin Bieber. As individuals, we all want better movies and music. As people, we're really bad at picking them.
I guess your use of the word "pirate" is making me prejudiced a bit. I mean, is there really a serious contingent among those who believe everything should be free and are too cheap to fork over 20 bucks for a DVD, that would readily give away $100 each to get a movie made, sight unseen? If so, *why?*
I'm still waiting for another big musician to try NIN or Radiohead's patronage-based business models. Doesn't seem to be happening...
How about they make a movie with a totally *new* idea as we already have seen the Bioshock story! Huh? Huh? Maybe? Huh?
Let's face it as much as game companies talk a bout catering for adults they don't and this why a mature game as a movie would be viewed as needing to be PG-13 so it's easier for the kids to watch it. Fuck that, let's actually cater to adults and then maybe it won't be an issue if game based movies are R-rated.
This is an interesting article and I can see why the people involved made the choices they made. The R-rating has been thoroughly debated and I have to agree that I don't think the plot would work with a PG-13 setting. The problem is that I can see why a movie studio would decline spending so much money on an R-rated movie. First of all, PG-13 movies make more money. Movie nights are often date night or family outing affairs and R rated movies have been shown to make less money. Next, this movie was going to be a horror movie. There is a reason that horror movies aspire to become "cult classics." This is because many people generally steer clear of horror movies. Horror movies don't compete for viewers from the general public; they compete for horror aficionados. To compound this, the movie is a video-game movie. Video-game movies often flop in the theaters because the writers have to condense 40 hours of game play and subtle plot development into a 90 minute movie. You also get a similar problem to the horror movie problem in that you have a specific demographic that seeks out video-game movies. A quick Venn-diagram would show why movie producers would be reluctant to make a move that depended on two different demographics wanting to spend money. The last problem is the setting. Historically, oceanic movies haven't made much profit (Waterworld, Sphere, even The Abyss). I'm not saying that a Bioshock movie wouldn't be good or fun to watch; I just think that from a capitalistic point of view, the movie is doomed until a studio decides to loose money on "a creative work of art." Then again, maybe Resident Evil could be used to prove me wrong.
SANK!
Can I pay in Bitcoins?
Actually, I'd give to a Kickstarter project, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Wait, does Kickstarter work outside the USA?
No wit here.
Underwater expert / Director experience - Check
Has the money to fund it himself, if necessary - Check
would "do it right", showing it the respect it deserves - Check