In some of the greatest stories written, a creator must kill his creation before it gets out of control. Thus is the story of the Bioshock movie. At a recent BAFTA event, Bioshock creator Ken Levine was blatantly honest about why audiences never got to take a cinematic trip into Rapture.

He decided to kill his own creation.

“Take Two is one of those companies that gives a lot of trust to their creative people and so they said to me, ‘if you want to kill it Ken, kill it’. And I killed it.”

This came about after Universal trimmed the budget from $200 million to $80 million and director Gore Verbinski left the project over the budget reduction. And why did the studio suddenly get cold feet and slash the budget by so much? Would you believe [amazon_link id=”B001FB55H6″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Watchmen[/amazon_link]?

“There was a deal in place and it was actually in production at Universal, and Gore Verbinski was directing it. And what happened was – this is my theory – it’s a very big movie and Gore was very excited about it and he wanted to make a very dark, what he would call a ‘hard-rated’ horror film – an R rated film with a lot of blood. Then The Watchmen came out – and I really liked The Watchmen – but it didn’t do well for whatever reason and the studio got cold feet about making an R rated $200 million film.”

I don’t blame Levine for wanting to keep the movie from beginning if he didn’t feel wholly comfortable with the direction it was heading. As far as Universal getting cold feet, I don’t blame the failure of Watchmen, I blame the comic fans who clamored for a big screen version of the greatest graphic novel ever written and didn’t go and give it the support it needed.