R-Rating Sunk BioShock Movie Plans 140
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."
Donations from pirates? Arr. (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Same rating as the game... ? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Why the fuck would it matter?"
Precisely. Didn't they look at the demographics?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_culture [wikipedia.org]
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)
Re:Same rating as the game... ? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:damn (Score:5, Insightful)