“Make It like Fallout” - Jack Quaid Pitches His Idea for a BioShock TV Series

The best video games that have found themselves getting successful adaptations have always been narrative-driven like The Last of Us and Fallout.

As it turns out, there had been attempts to adapt BioShock for a while, but the project just never seems to get off the ground. Now, The Boys star Jack Quaid has an idea of what he wants out of a series set in the world of Rapture.

What Should a BioShock TV Show Be Like?

In a recent interview with IGN while promoting his movie Novocaine, Quaid talked a bit about what he would want out of a BioShock TV series. He explains:

“I want a BioShock TV show, and I want it to take place in two different time periods. One, obviously, like, the game like we know, then I want High Rapture; and I want that entire class war between Fontaine and Ryan… and there’s so many interesting characters in that game, in that universe that you only meet after the Fall when they’re like—they’ve definitely fallen on hard times. They have been firmly BioShock-ed.”

Comparing his pitch to other existing series, Quaid made an example with Amazon’s Fallout series which also explored two different time periods—one before the Nuclear War, and one years after the bombs had dropped as humanity just kept thriving. Quaid continues:

“I would love to jump back and forth between those two time periods—kind of in the way that Fallout did, but maybe lean more into that time jump. Maybe in kind of a Yellowjackets-y way where you’re kind of moving back and forward, and you’re weaving it.”

Welcome to Rapture

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Credit: 2K Games | fair use for promotional purposes

In the original game, players are thrust into the decrepit underwater world of Rapture which is overrun by mutated citizens, and the narrative will have the player explore exactly what happened in the city to have all the people turn into drug-addled psychos.

Though Rapture is a cesspool when the players visit it, there is evidence of a once-thriving society (i.e., High Rapture) which looked to be Ayn Rand’s ideal utopia of humanity making the best of themselves. Players actually got to walk around High Rapture in the BioShock: Infinite DLC Burial at Sea.

Previous Attempts at an Adaptation

Pirates of the Caribbean’s Gore Verbinski had actually tried to adapt BioShock as a movie back in the mid-2010s but said that the studios couldn’t approve it because of the expensive production value as well as the R-rating.

With the evolution of filmmaking technology though, and the success of several R-rated video game properties on television, there's definitely more room for an adaptation moving forward. Back in 2022, it was said that Netflix was working on a movie, but there hasn't been any significant update since then.

A fourth game had actually been announced back in 2019, but again, there hasn’t been any major update since. Though the game could be canceled, Infinite was so well-received that there has to be a chance that someone wants to bring the BioShock franchise back somehow. Fans will just have to wait and see what happens.

A BioShock series has not been officially announced.