Almost a year ago, it was announced that BioShock would be adapted for the masses in the form of a Hollywood epic to grace cinemas and introduce the general public to the art-deco styled utopia gone wrong setting of Rapture.

A year is a long time in the film business, with the BioShock movie still in a pre-production phase. It has been revealed that Universal Pictures have shown concern at the film's spiralling budget which has hit a sum of US$160 million, presently halting the production of the film.

It is no secret that Universal Pictures is a business, and the film is currently "on hold" according to director Gore Verbinski, who explained the situation:

We were asked by Universal to move the film outside the U.S. to take advantage of a tax credit. We are evaluating whether this is something we want to do. In the meantime, the film is in a holding pattern.

A tax credit to produce a video game movie. Classy. One would think that a giant such as Universal Pictures would be willing to lay down the cash regardless for something that is fairly certain to make-back its budget in box-office sales alone. Verbinski seems to be confident about the film's potential declining a role to direct the next Pirates of the Caribbean film so that he could work on the BioShock film.

According to Universal Pictures, the BioShock film will be released. After all, they did spend some millions (though the amount of millions were not disclosed) to acquire the rights to produce a film based on the video game.

Currently, this means that the BioShock film is on hiatus, until Universal Pictures and the rest of the team that is due to work on the film decide what they are going to do - either produce the film outside the United States, or convince somebody to give them a couple more million dollars to produce the film.