Verbinski rethinking BioShock film - Report

LOS ANGELES--It has been anything but smooth sailing lately for the big-screen adaptation of 2K Games' BioShock. The project reportedly ran into budgetary problems in April, and now Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski is having second thoughts about whether he'll helm the project after all.

"The bottom line is it has to shoot out of the States for budget reasons and my schedule may be prohibitive," Verbinski told The Los Angeles Times. "There's a great script and a really interesting cast. It really comes down to the financial model now. Big movies are just not being shot in the States. I'm weighing whether I can physically go the UK or Australia or one of those other places with a tax rebate for a year and a half."

Even if he doesn't direct the BioShock adaptation, this likely isn't the last gamers will hear of Verbinski. The Times also reports that Verbinski's production house, Blind Wink, is currently working on five different gaming projects. To help develop the games--one of which has reached the prototype stage--Verbinski enlisted former Pandemic Studios designer Will Stahl.

"They're wildly diverse," Verbinski said of the projects. "Some of the stuff we’re doing is taking a conventional [first-person shooter] experience and tweaking it in a way that hasn't been thought of before. We looked at it from a different angle and changed the experience."