Gore Verbinski has been attached to the film adaptation of Bioshock for years now, with very little news about production of the property trickling from a few scant interviews. Today is no different as we receive another tidbit that seems to be the cause for delay:

via Coming Soon

I couldn’t really get past anybody that would spend the money that it would take to do it and keep an R rating,” he explained, “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 pricetag is high. We just didn’t have any takers on an R-rated movie with that pricetag.

The article even went as far as to say that he’s no longer actively involved in the project, unfortunately putting the movie in the same category as Halo, Mass Effect (probably), and Gears of War for stalling out in production.

I had high hopes for this movie and liked the tone that the director was aiming toward. I enjoyed the first PoTC enough to give him a chance with Bioshock and can’t help but feel disappointed that studios aren’t ready to back his vision for this film. Hopefully something changes and this movie finally makes its way to the silver screen without disrupting the masses too much for any liberties that it may take.