From BioShock to Splinter Cell: 6 game adaptations that never made it to the screen

Anyone following entertainment industry news has likely noticed a radical transformation: video game adaptations are finally living in their "golden age." The resounding success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, the narrative depth of The Last of Us on HBO, and the recent impact of the Resident Evil film have consolidated a landscape where Hollywood and the gaming universe walk hand in hand.

However, this ground was not always fertile. There was a time—one that many fans prefer to forget—when the term "video game adaptation" was synonymous with critical and financial failure. While some productions saw the light of day only to be slaughtered, others never even got the chance. Today, we explore six notable cases of projects that remained just promises and left us only with curiosity about what they could have been.

The graveyard of shelved projects

1. BioShock: The adult vision that failed to convince the studio

The underwater city of Rapture is a perfect setting for cinema, but the journey to bring BioShock to the big screen has been tortuous. In the late 2000s, Universal Pictures tried to spearhead the project with acclaimed director Gore Verbinski. The major impasse? The director's artistic vision. Verbinski demanded an astronomical budget and, crucially, an R-rating to preserve the game's visceral violence and dark atmosphere. The studio, fearing the financial risk of a restricted film, rejected the demands. Today, with Netflix and Francis Lawrence at the helm, fans have renewed hope, but Verbinski’s original project remains a classic industry "what if."

2. Halo: From Peter Jackson to District 9

Before the Paramount+ series, Master Chief almost made it to theaters by the hands of none other than Peter Jackson (of The Lord of the Rings). With the then-promising Neill Blomkamp directing and Alex Garland writing, the Halo film had everything to be a milestone. In 2006, however, the project imploded due to corporate disputes between Microsoft, 20th Century Fox, and Universal. Bureaucracy regarding profit-sharing made the production unfeasible. The upside? Blomkamp's frustration with the industry served as fuel for him to create District 9, one of the greatest science fiction works of recent years.

3. Metroid: Nintendo’s rigid protection

In 2004, iconic director John Woo held the rights to adapt Metroid. The proposal was to bring the loneliness and mystery of Samus Aran to action cinema. The project died in the water due to Nintendo's iron grip. The Japanese developer, known for protecting its intellectual properties with tooth and nail, did not accept the creative liberties the studio wanted to take with the protagonist's origin story. The result was years of creative stalemate until the rights expired in 2007, burying the project.

4. Sly Cooper: The domino effect

In 2014, the thief raccoon Sly Cooper seemed destined to get an animated feature film. Sony Pictures was confident, until the Ratchet & Clank movie—produced by the same team—was a box office disaster in 2016. Scared by the possibility of another loss, Sony opted for a path of caution and shelved the project. Sometimes, commercial success is the only criterion that matters to studios, regardless of the quality of the source material.

5. The Sims: The project that Disney inherited

The idea of a live-action The Sims movie seems bizarre today, but it was a real goal for 20th Century Fox in the 2000s. The project focused on a comedy based on life simulation mechanics. However, the costs of visual effects needed to "translate" the game's language into realism were considered prohibitive for the time. The project wandered in limbo until the merger of Fox with Disney in 2019, when it was officially discarded. With the recent announcement of a new effort by Amazon MGM, we might finally see the "Plumbobs" shining on screens.

6. Splinter Cell: The end of an era of uncertainty

Announced in 2012, Splinter Cell was one of the most anticipated projects by espionage fans. With Tom Hardy cast to play Sam Fisher and directed by Doug Liman, the production seemed unshakable. Time, however, proved otherwise. For over a decade, the production suffered from scripts that never pleased everyone and constant changes in the creative team. The film was officially canceled in 2024, proving that not even big names like Hardy are enough to save a production when the narrative backbone is undefined.

The future of adaptations

Although the list of disappointments is extensive, it serves as a reminder of how difficult it is to transpose the interactivity of games to the passivity of cinema. Today, with a better understanding of the audience and screenwriters who respect the original material, we are living in a moment of optimism.

For those who want to stay on top of what's coming, the industry is still going full steam ahead. The market has changed, the stakes have risen, and if you are a gaming fan, the best is yet to come on the big screen and in streaming.