Guillermo Del Toro Says BioShock Movie Adaptation Was Killed by 'Disastrous' Phone Call

Guillermo del Toro has confirmed that he was once involved in early plans for a BioShock movie, but the project fell apart after a "disastrous" phone call.

In an interview with IGN for the IGN30 Icons Series, del Toro made it clear that he "never" wants to work on a video game again. While he had previously been open to turning existing games into films, his recent attempts have all ended badly.

Rumors have long circulated that del Toro was attached to a BioShock movie that never materialized. In 2017, he even said he'd love to see the game's story on the big screen after an earlier attempt with Gore Verbinski fell through.

Now, he's officially confirmed his involvement with a BioShock adaptation, though it never came to be—and it sounds like there was drama behind its collapse.

"You know, I tried," he told us when asked if he'd ever want to adapt a game into a film. "We had a very contentious call about a couple of games. I find that the dynamics of a video game are very different than a movie. They may be cinematically similar in terms of the camera moving and this and that, but the storytelling is very different, because you're not solving puzzles. You're not assembling.

"When we made the structure for Insane, we created what I call a mandala. You have to give the illusion of an infinite sandbox and you lead audiences to the right or to the left through their 'own decisions,' but you sort of have to corner them. So it's a very different thing.

"So adapting it, BioShock, we had a couple of calls. They are probably one of the most disastrous calls I've ever had. So no, f**k no."

He didn't elaborate on what made these calls so "contentious" and "disastrous," but they clearly left a bad taste in his mouth. It's a shame, because a BioShock movie directed by del Toro sounds like a dream come true.

After all, it's one of his favorite games, as he also shared in this same interview. It's one of several titles he mentioned off the cuff, though not the most surprising—that honor goes to Angry Birds, which del Toro says he plays almost every day.

And although del Toro has been involved with several major video games over the years (PT, Death Stranding), he told us he's hesitant to make his own games after Insane, his planned trilogy of dark, cinematic games, never got released.

"Never again," he told us. "No, not at all, because it's simply too—we developed Insane, and then that went down. A lot of the ideas later, I saw stuff that was done in other video games that was similar. And I went, 'Well, somebody did it. That's great.' But we were aiming really high."

Speaking of PT and Death Stranding, The Pan's Labyrinth creator has expressed no shortage of love for Kojima's games, calling him a "pure artist" and admitting that the grand majority of PT was entirely Kojima's idea.

"I mean, I'm glad to get on the ride for free, but everything that ended up being PT, it was him," he said. "...I love that man. He's one of those guys you meet that you go, you might as well be in the Renaissance. You are in front of a pure artist and he cares about one thing, stories. That's it."

Our full, extended interview with Guillermo del Toro is available to watch now. If you're hungry for more interviews, you can check out a previous episode of the IGN30 Icons Series, where we chatted with Ken Levine, creator of famed games like System Shock 2 and its spiritual successor, BioShock.