Award-winning director Guillermo del Toro is a video game enthusiast. He spent years developing a game called Insane, but the project was ultimately canceled, and he has no plans to try again. What about adapting games into movies? It turns out he tried that too, but when he communicated with the team behind BioShock, the process was a complete disaster.
In a recent interview with IGN, Guillermo del Toro was asked if he would consider adapting video games into films. Surprisingly, he not only revealed that he had attempted this before, but also mentioned that he once planned to create a live-action BioShock movie. However, the creative logic behind films and games is vastly different, and his several communications with game studios and publishers did not go smoothly.
"You know, I tried. We had one heated phone call regarding the adaptation of a few games," del Toro said.
"I found that the operational logic of video games is completely different from that of films, right? There may be similarities in visual presentation, such as camera movement, but the way stories are told is entirely different—when watching a movie, you don't need to solve puzzles or collect items. When we were building the framework for (my unfinished game) Insane, I created what I called a 'mandala' structure; you have to create the illusion of an infinite sandbox, guiding players in different directions through their own choices, but essentially, you have to lead them down a predetermined path."
"So it's completely different," del Toro explained to IGN. "So adapting... you know, with BioShock, we had a few phone calls. Those were—arguably some of the most disastrous calls of my life. Uh... so forget it, I've had enough."
When asked about his favorite games, the Hellboy director said he loves Left 4 Dead, Death Stranding, and Shadow of the Colossus, as these works prompted him to deeply reflect on "many intangible things." He also enjoys Dead Cells, though he admitted he dislikes the mechanic of dying repeatedly and respawning. He praised BioShock's game world for being "immersive and captivating."
But del Toro laughed and revealed that the game he plays most is actually Angry Birds.
"Whenever I have free time during the day, I play Angry Birds," del Toro admitted. "I'm really good at it, seriously very skilled."
As for the BioShock live-action film, the project has been in intermittent development since 2010 and appears to still be moving forward. In 2022, 2K announced it would collaborate with Netflix to produce the film. In 2024, the film's producers indicated that the project is still progressing at Netflix, but the budget has been cut.
"So what we're doing now is a much smaller-scale version," producer Roy Lee stated at Comic-Con 2024. "The film will adopt a more personal narrative perspective rather than being a massive blockbuster project."