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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."
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
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I think Terry Gilliam has come up with the best explanation:
It used to be that studio execs were entrepreneurs. Businessmen with vision willing to take risks. These days studios are part of media conglomerates so modern studio execs are middle management, bringing with them the mindset of the middle manager.
Makes sense to me.
"Why the fuck would it matter?"
Precisely. Didn't they look at the demographics?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_culture
First sentence in the first section. "The average age for a video game player is 35".
Who the hell do they think their target audience would be for a movie of the same title and content? As you point out, precisely the same people that we're allowed to buy the game with a "Mature" rating...or did they expect the game would be sold to someone else, and thus include them in their demographic model? I wonder who that might be? The same people that wouldn't be allowed to see the movie, maybe?
Just make the damned movie. Never know, it could be the next "The Exorcist"...
"After several reissues, the film eventually earned $89,000,000 in domestic rentals.[38] To date, it has a total gross of $401,400,000 worldwide; if adjusted for inflation, this would be the top-grossing R-rated film of all time." (Wikipedia, again)
Cool, will put you down for that. I'm going to start a website on geocities and get this ball rolling. Anyone know HTML?
No, it started as a series of sketches performed by the Cambridge Footlights, then that was made into the radio drama. That was then novelised by an enterprising young pornographer of some disrepute. (This pulp novelisation was later serialised on television by Michael Winner and Ken Russell but almost no-one ever acknowledges this). Anyway, it was only made into a book when the original sketches' notes were found and interpreted by the Red Baron, (using Alan Turing and other captured code-breakers from Bletchley Park), who believed them to be the D-Day invasion plans. Turing's recollections of this experience to Tolkien then went on to form the basis for the outline of the canonical version of the LotR books. They languished in obscurity for 50 years before eventually, a young man named Peter Jackson stumbled upon a copy of them in his grand-father's attic while investigating a sort of a musty, damp smell. But don't you try and tell that to the wikipedia editors. Bastards.
First sentence in the first section. "The average age for a video game player is 35".
Doesn't matter.
You say "video game" and the folks with money in Hollywood think "kids".
You pitch a movie with action and monsters and explosions, and the folks with money in Hollywood think "teenagers".
The target demographic for just about anything sci-fi or horror is teenagers. They really want to get that PG-13 rating.
That's why they watered down the first AvP movie so much. I mean... It's a combination of two different R-rated franchises. One of them involves aliens that skin you alive and take your skull for a trophy. The other one involves aliens that rape your face and kill you by violently exploding out of your chest. But if you can move enough of the gore off-screen you can nail that PG-13 rating, and sell a lot more tickets.
And that's what it's all about - selling tickets. If you get an R rating you've just excluded an awful lot of people who aren't old enough to go see the movie on their own. You're automatically reducing the number of people that can possibly buy your tickets.
If it's some big, complex, thoughtful, dramatic movie... Well, the odds are good that you weren't going to get too many kids in there anyway, so that doesn't really matter.
If it's a movie with explosions and monsters and lasers and whatnot... There's a good chance there are plenty of kids who'd like to go see it. And if you get an R rating, they can't. So you've just shot yourself in the foot.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
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.
is anyone surprised? you have to murder little girls for their spirit energy or whatever. the base concept is a little fucked up.
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.
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