[The Next Side via Super Punch]

[via Geekologie]

Krix, a graphic designer and propmaker, took Best Journeyman and Best Professional Costume Design at the con for his Big Daddy suit (as well as the accompanying Splicer and Little Sister). The suit took roughly seven weeks to complete (and, he says, was not quite perfected by Dragon*Con) and weighed between 50 and 60 pounds. You can see the spinning drill as well as some shots from his process below, but he has the entire step-by-step posted on his blog.

Big Daddy (Bioshock) [Volpin Props via Cherie Priest]

I have to say I kind of like the alien, menacing look of the earlier designs, but I bet the svelte newer version will be a lot easier to maneuver. [The Cult Of Rapture via GameSetWatch]

Prison Break actor Wentworth Miller took to his Twitter to let his fans know that he's talking Bioshock. And later tweets seem to imply it's indeed the video-game's movie version.

This means a few things: that Hollywood is moving forward with the long-in-development film, budget problems or not. Plus it means actors like Miller are going to be getting a second look as they are a bit cheaper than the big Hollywood A-list actors. I'm completely for this. I like Miller — he's a solid actor in Prison Break — and I'm interested to see more from him. And I want to see who else they start to tap for roles in this film.

UPDATE: Sorry guys, I was had. Thanks to commenters pointing this out, looks like this Twitter might be a big fat fake. I apologize if I excited anyone (including myself). I wish it was true because I really would like this movie to be filmed.

Variety report that Verbinski's adaptation of the video game was preparing to shoot in Los Angeles when Universal executives got nervous about the rumored $160million budget and put the project on hold to work out on how to save some money. First to go were some production staff, and next may be the shoot's current location, according to the director:

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.

However, sources are saying that neither Universal or Verbinski are willing to let the movie stay in limbo, and that both remain committed to the project... as long as it gets a little cheaper.

Universal halts Verbinski's 'Bioshock' [Variety]

As in the original Bioshock, you'll be exploring the ruins of an undersea city that was supposed to be a utopia. This time around, it's ten years later, and you're a prototype "big daddy," escaping from mental conditioning by the mad scientist Dr. Bridgette Tenenbaum. Young girls are being kidnapped by a mysterious creature known as a "Big Sister," and Tenenbaum, the creator of the "Little Sisters," feels a sense of responsibility. It's hinted the "Big Sister" may be one of the "Little Sisters" freed at the end of the first game, who didn't take well to life on the outside. As you wake up at the start of the game, you hear Tenenbaum's voice urging you on to go find the Big Sister.

Here's a featurette about the new game:

And here are some awesome screenshots and concept drawings (more at the link below):

In the new game, you won't just explore Rapture, you'll be able to go outside as well, thanks to a fancy diving suit that comes with your "big daddy" armor. This'll provide a break from the non-stop claustrophobic action and also let you access a part of the city you couldn't reach otherwise. And you start to realize that Rapture and the sea-slug stem-cell substance ADAM are having on the local sea life, including weirdly mutated coral that's meshed with the city walls. You also get to visit the headquarters of Fontaine Futuristics. And as in the first game, you have a choice between saving Little Sisters, or harvesting ADAM from them. But you can also "adopt" them, which means they become your friends and help you find other sources of ADAM, which enhances your abilities. But if you adopt a Little Sister, you have to protect her from the vicious Slicers. And of course, the Big Sister is horrifying and totally lethal, with a needle arm and a cage on her back to hold Little Sisters.

[Gamespot]

Avatar (2009)

Admittedly, it's a bit of a tall order to make a trailer for a movie whose premise is still far from clear. The first half is kinda cool, but it doesn't really have much to do with what little is known of Avatar's story, which I think is set a couple centuries in the future. The second half is just sort of so-so. Not terrible, but there's definitely better out there.

Bioshock (2010)

And this is one of them. This probably impresses me more than it necessarily should because I've seen so few of the movies used to construct the trailer, which according to its maker include City of Lost Children, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Casshern, Dark City, Cast Away, Aliens of the Deep, I, Robot, Silent Hill, and AI: Artificial Intelligence. Of those, I'm somewhat ashamed to say I only recognized Laurence Olivier from Sky Captain (though I have seen Dark City). Part of the reason this trailer works fairly well is its creator chose movies that are reasonably similar stylistically, making it more difficult to figure out what does and doesn't fit together if you haven't seen the source material (we'll soon deal with a trailer that just throws together a bunch of famous contemporary movies).

Captain America (2010)

This one is a bit different from the rest, as it's a completely original trailer instead of a fan mash-up. It's surprisingly intense for what is ultimately a bunch of dudes running around on a beach, some of whom are very clearly wearing sneakers. Still, the pounding music and washed-out look do have their charms, and remembering to throw in a shot of Nick Fury is a definite plus.

Cowboy Bebop (TBD)

This one has to get points for sheer insanity. This combines one of the Matrix sequels, The Phantom Menace, Wanted, Live Free or Die Hard, Firefly, Constantine, and Deep Impact, and those are just the ones I can easily identify. There's some definite overuse of Angelina Jolie here (should you really include the curving of the bullet when that's so closely identified with Wanted?), but it's certainly never boring. Cutting all the dialogue was also a good call, as forcing the characters to say things that aren't immediately recognizable from previous movies is usually the biggest pitfall of fake trailers. From what I've seen, there's just no good way to do it, and unless you've got something to distract the viewer (like Brad Pitt in full Thundercat makeup, for example), it can be fatally distracting.

Ghostbusters 3 (TBD)

Wow, five minutes is a long time for a fake trailer. Still pretty good though. Here, as the creator puts it, is the "recipe" for this trailer:

Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters 2, Predator, Independence Day, Casper, Nightwatch, Gremlins 2, Lost in Translation, End of Days, Haunted Mansion, Hellboy, Earth vs the Spider, Orange County, Blues Brothers 2000, Miss Congeniality 2, Christmas with the Kranks, Miss Congeniality, Sleepy Hollow, X-Men, The Blob, Spider-man 3, High Spirits, Frighteners, Constantine, Mars Attacks, Charlie's Angels, Be Kind Rewind, Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, Dan in Real Life

Makes that Cowboy Bebop trailer look positively unambitious. At least this one manages to be somewhat deft about including clips from Lost in Translation. One of the less impressive trailers I saw just came right out and explicitly made Dr. Venkman an actor now...and that's just nutty. Although after spending so much time with the original cast was there really any reason to throw in a bunch of new Ghostbusters at the end?

Green Lantern (2010)

I'm a bit torn about this one. There's something a bit perverse about using quite so much footage from a Marvel movie for a DC trailer, and it was probably an overstep to actually use some of Johnny Storm's dialogue from Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Still, I'm being more than a little nitpicky, as this trailer features some truly awesome digital trickery to actually create some footage of Green Lanterns flying, and the casting choices of Tim Curry as Sinestro and Warwick Davies as a Guardian are inspired. Although if Denzel Washington is supposed to be John Stewart, I'm sorry, but I'm just not buying it, at least not on the strength of two random clips.

Iron Man 2 (2010)

I'll assume this was made before Terrence Howard was mysteriously removed from the sequel in favor of Don Cheadle. Cutting in footage from the Iron Man video game was, to put it mildly, a mistake, because it just doesn't gel properly with the rest of what's in there. I will give it credit for some clever cuts that sort of do make it look like Iron Man and War Machine are sharing the screen, but using "Iron Man" as the trailer's main song? I feel as though the end credits to the first movie pretty much retired the use of that song.

Spider-Man 4 (TBD)

Some terrible music choices shouldn't necessarily take away from the technical merit on display in this trailer. It's certainly a lot more interesting to try to spotlight the Lizard as the Spider-Man 4 villain instead of, say, Venom again, which pretty much involves remixing a Spider-Man 3 trailer. Or you can use Carnage, which is basically the same process, except you slap a red filter on it to make it look a bit different (though this trailer includes him through clips from Resident Evil: Apocalypse). I don't know whether I would have relied quite so much on Jurassic Park, but I guess where else are you going to find so many shots lizard-like things in laboratory settings?

Overall, I'm not sure any of these are mindblowingly awesome in quite the same way that the Thundercats trailer was, but credit where credit is due - some of these are pretty cool, assuming your suspension of disbelief is ready to work overtime.

The second game takes place in the 70s, ten years after the original. Yes, that's you controlling Big Daddy - Amazing, I know. In the video, you're chasing down Big Sister whilst the screams of helpless victims echo in the distance. Also, I believe that Bridgette Tenenbaum makes a quickie appearance. Apparently Tenebaum is distraught because "Big Sister" is taking little girls and turning them into monsters. You play Tenebaum's only hope, the prototype Big Daddy, and doesn't it feel good when you're holding the drill?

After watching this, one can only hope that Hollywood is paying attention. Yes, they're making a Bioshock film, but this is bigger than that. Oftentimes, the stories told via video game are a thousand times more compelling than most blockbusters. I hope the Bio film lives up to the game and maybe inspires Hollywood to hire a few folks from the video game world rather than just making a terrible Chun Li film.

Here is a much older trailer for Bioshock 2:

One of the most absurd and sad sculptures is of this man working at his desk. How many times have you sat down at your desk and felt like you were slowly sinking underwater?

Probably the most gorgeous of Taylor's underwater sculptures is this one, of several people in a ring holding hands.

Here is a detail of one of the ring people's faces, after many months below the waves.

You can see a lot more of Jason deCaires Taylor's work in his gallery.

City of Ember
Based on a series of novels about a post-apocalyptic underground city that's running down, the movie focuses on two adolescent heroes who discover the world above ground. The movie comes out Oct. 10.
Steampunk levels:
The underground city, Ember, has an industrial feel. Expect a lot of giant pipes and huge generators. But the movie is set in the future, and there's no Victorian sensibility to it. On a scale of one to steamy, it isn't even wearing goggles.

Mutant Chronicles
Set 700 years in the future, the Earth is ruled by feudal corporations and has depleted most of its natural resources. During a war between two corporations, a machine unleashes mutants on the world and our heroes must destroy it to save the world. The movie comes out later this year.
Steampunk levels:
Steam power is all that's left in this future, and the feudal corporate governments are reminiscent of nineteenth century industrial companies that pretty much owned their workers. But there are also shades of medieval society here too. On a scale of one to steamy, it's condensed steam on brass.

Here Be Monsters!
Set in an alternate 1850s London, this is the tale of a boy who emerges from an underground city of monsters to live the life of a human. Based on a novel. No release date yet.
Steampunk levels:
Set in the Victorian era, complete with subterranean world of dreamy crawlies. On a scale of one to steamy, it's a burnished gear.

Larklight
Set in an alternate nineteenth century which includes extensive space travel, this flick is being directed by period movie master Shekhar "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" Kapur. Our heroes must travel in their Victorian spaceships to fight pirates. No release date yet.
Steampunk levels:
We've got the Victorian era crossed with the era of space flight, which is a classic steampunk mashup move. There are also pirates. On a scale of one to steamy, this flick is scalding hot.

The Diamond Age
Last year, the SciFi Channel announced they'd be doing a miniseries based on Neal Stephenson's classic retro-nano-corporate novel about (in part) a group of people called the neo-Victorians. No word on what's happening with the production, though last year George Clooney was attached as producer.
Steampunk levels:
There are neo-Victorians who borrow their fashions, social mores, and styles from Victorian England. But they use nanotech and computer science, not steam and industrial machines. On a scale of one to steamy, this miniseries is an iPhone tucked into a tophat.

Bioshock
Based on the popular videogame about a failed underwater Utopian community, Bioshock is set to be directed by Gore "Pirates of the Carribean" Verbinski, who told Variety that he's taking his concept design cues from Jules Verne and Ayn Rand (whose work inspired the game).
Steampunk levels:
You've got the Verne influence, and you've got an underwater city. Plus if the visuals in the game are preserved, there's a lot of brass and Victoriana, mingled with a strange 1950s feeling. Really, the city in Bioshock is a kind of historical hodgepodge. On a scale of one to steamy, this movie is unpolished brass.

The Adventures of Luther Arkwright
Based on a series of comic books, the story follows multiverse rift-tripper Luther Arkwright when he finds himself in an alternate reality where the British Empire never fell.
Steampunk levels:
Alternate reality that includes the British Empire, plus cross-dimensional travel. Expect a lot of swashbuckling and lovely scifi mumbo-jumbo about timelines. On a scale of one to steamy, it's screaming like a teakettle on the boil.

Additional research by Lauren Davis.

Bioshock's main character is the video game's Jack who crashes his plane into the underwater city of Rapture. This dystopian society is based upon its founder's idea to start a new Eden, but of course it goes horribly wrong with mutant sea slugs and scary 'Big Daddys' and 'Little Sisters,' which are little girls embedded with sea slugs. The Aviator and Star Trek: Nemesis writer John Logan is also rumored to be attached as the writer to this project.

In the wake of Resident Evil (all three), Silent Hill, Tomb Raider, Doom, Mortal Kombat, Super Mario Bros., BloodRayne and Hitman, I ask you: has there ever been a good movie based on a video game? [Variety]

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Artist Ben Mauro put these images up on his blog as a "proposed sequel to BioShock," but it turns out that they were pieces for a class project where they had to design a sequel to a film or a movie that they chose. However, it didn't stop them from racing around the nets as official confirmation of a sequel. However, that doesn't make his artwork any less pretty to look at. While the other images are all mass-transity, that whale stands out as very cool, and intriguing.

BioShock brought a gorgeous world of 1930s era extravagance and decay to gaming consoles around the world last year, and the critical acclaim and financial success will probably launch a sequel, although nothing has been announced so far. However, developer Take-Two has referred to the game as a franchise, and they've opened a new development house which is rumored to be solely working on BioShock, so you can be sure there will be another one. In fact, if you own an Xbox 360 or a PC that you can game on, and you haven't done so, give this game a whirl. We'll try and keep it spoiler-free, but when you finish the game you can understand the need for a lot of brand-new concept art.

Possible BioShock 2 concept art?

There's a central statue of Atlas holding up the world, which has been smashed by a piece of the city falling from overhead. In the background you can see untended plants growing out of control while water pours in from overhead. Meanwhile schools of fish drift lazily by in the background. It's a fully-realized vision of a utopia gone wrong, and we highly recommend getting inside the game and exploring it.

• Half-Life: The original Half-Life came out in 1998, and it's sequel Half-Life 2 came out in 2004. The extremely popular game has spawned numerous "mini-sequels," including Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and Episode 2, and the spinoff title Portal.

  In the game, you play Dr. Gordon Freeman, a scientist who unwittingly tears open a dimensional portal during a routine experiment at a facility in the Black Mesa Research Facility in New Mexico. Aliens begin pouring through the newly opened portal, and you find yourself both the target of these creatures, and of government forces who are trying to hush up the incident. You end up surviving (the sequels wouldn't make much sense otherwise) and things get continually worse. By the time Half-Life 2 begins, the Earth has been changed into a dystopian world that is slowly being de-terraformed into a wasteland. Oceans are being drained, buildings taken apart, and the place is full of both alien and humanoid forces who want to have your liver for dinner.

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• Halo: Halo 3 came out in September, to massively sales and fanboys complaining that it just "wasn't enough," but developer Bungie has created a fully realized universe within in the game.

  Halo takes place in the distant future where the human race is in the middle of a bitter war with an alien race called The Covenant. You play "Master Chief," a genetically engineered supersoldier (called a Spartan) who dons battle armor and serves as humanity's last hope. As the game progresses, you discover that the Covenant have found a giant ring-like object (a Halo) left behind by an ancient alien race called The Forerunners. If activated, the Halo will act as a deadly weapon, able to destroy entire planets. Much like Luke destroying the Death Star, you have to destroy the Halo and make sure the Covenant don't win. The Earth in Halo is brutally invaded by the Covenant, where they lay waste to entire continents with massive weapons, turning all of the land into glass. Cities have become battlefields, and most of the citizens have been wiped out, or are in deep hiding. It's not a pretty site when you see nukes going off all over the planet, and it's even less pretty when you have to go down there. Even if you manage to save the world, it's going to look like a wasteland when you're done.

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• BioShock: One of the most imaginative games to come along in years isn't set in the future at all, but in a bizarre undersea city that re-imagines the future of the past, and combines a steampunk science fiction approach with genetic modification technology.

  In BioShock the game controls Jack, a passenger aboard a plane in 1960. Disaster strikes and the plane plummets into the ocean, killing everyone aboard except you. You swim to a nearby tower poking out of the dark waters, and inside find a bathysphere that takes into Rapture, a full-sized city built secretly on the ocean floor in 1946. Through a series of audio recordings and newsreel style videos, you're shown how meglomaniacal millionaire Andrew Ryan built the city to get away from what he saw as the oppressive rules of government and religion. He envisioned Rapture as an undersea utopia, but it didn't take long for things to unravel. By the time Jack arrives in the city, it's clear that the place is falling apart, and most of the popular are dead. The only remaining inhabitants are "Splicers," genetically mutated humans who are murderous and insane, and a few human holdouts who have barricaded themselves into the few remaining safe places in the city. You become trapped in a battle between the leader of the black market, Atlas, and the insane Ryan himself. As the game progresses, you acquire raw genetic material that you can use at upgrade stations to modify your genetic template, meaning you can give yourself telekinesis, the ability to turn invisible, or the power to shoot flames from your hands. It's sort of like having Heroes on tap. You come to appreciate the beautiful disaster that Rapture has become, with the sea attempting to overtake the city that has become trapped in time.

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• Portal: Strictly speaking, Portal was meant to be a small one-note spinoff set in the Half-Life universe featuring a small game called Narbacular Drop that Half-Life developer Valve had acquired. It was included in The Orange Box, a game set Valve released last month that included Half-Life 2, Episode 1, Episode 2 and Portal. Portal has overwhelmingly been the smash hit of that set.

  In Portal you play Chell, a female test subject for Aperture Science, Inc. (a company in the Half-Life universe) who wakes up inside a gigantic maze and coached (or tortured, depending on your views) by an artificial intelligence called GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System). GLaDOS puts you through a series of testing chambers designed to help you learn how to use the "Portal" gun, which can create entrace and exit wormhole portals on walls, ceilings, and floors. Each chamber challenges you further with increasingly hard puzzles that you have to solve using the Portal gun in order to escape. As the game goes on, you notice that GLaDOS is a bit off her rocker, and all of the human observation posts are empty. In fact, she starts promising that cake will be waiting for you if you can complete the test course. Later you're able to slip behind the scenes and find some graffiti from a previous test subject telling you that the cake is a lie. Although if you finish the game, you find out that she might not have been lying all along. It's all immortalized in a song that GLaDOS sings you over the closing credits, which you can watch below.

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