Netflix’s Bioshock Movie Just Got an Exciting Update

Published Oct 8, 2026, 1:01 PM EDT Willa Rowe is a contributing writer at Polygon, covering games and entertainment. She is a New York-based journalist and critic whose work has been featured in Kotaku, Digital Trends, the A.V. Club, GamesRadar+, and more. She also co-hosts the Girl Mode podcast. The adaptation of the seminal game, which was announced in 2022, has almost hit a major milestone Sign in to your Polygon.com account Hollywood has been trying to make a film adaptation of 2007's BioShock for almost as long as the game has been around. As you might be able to guess based on the absence of such a film, those efforts have not gone very well! Netflix is trying to change that, as it is the latest company to enter production on a BioShock movie. Updates on the project have been incredibly rare, but director Francis Lawrence just gave some insight into how the film is progressing. Lawrence is currently making the rounds with the press to promote his upcoming film The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping. During an interview with GamesRadar+, the director shared that he is "still working on a script" for BioShock but that the team is "pretty close." "I'm feeling really good about it," Lawrence told GamesRadar+. As a refresher, Netflix announced Lawrence was attached to the project back in 2022. Here we are four years later, and the big update is that a script is almost complete. I'm sure that will instill a lot of confidence in fans that, this time, the BioShock movie will absolutely happen. For what it's worth, Lawrence does seem very eager to actually make BioShock happen. "I would love to make it," he said. "I've been like trying to. I've been working at it. I've been trying." Work on the project was delayed due to the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes in 2023, as well as Lawrence's commitment to Sunrise on the Reaping. With the latest Hunger Games film finally almost in theaters, perhaps Lawrence can once again focus on BioShock. Why has the BioShock movie been so hard to make? Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean) was the first director attached to adapt the 2007 game almost immediately after it was released. This iteration later fell apart due to budget concerns and Verbinski's desire for an R-rating. Recently, horror director Guillermo del Toro revealed he also had calls about leading the project but that these were some of "the most disastrous calls" the director has ever had. As one of the longest-running video game adaptations in development, BioShock may be Hollywood's white whale. Hopefully, Netflix will have better luck with the project, and we will get more updates soon, now that Lawrence is relatively free from Hunger Games duties.