American director Gore Verbinski recently announced that he will surrender the helm of the extremely successful Pirates of the Caribbean franchise ($2.6 billion international gross) in order to pursue a new oceanic film project entitled Bioshock, after the multi-platform first-person shooter of the same name by 2K Games.

Verbinski was expected to direct a fourth installment of Pirates, but recently broke the news to producer Jerry Bruckheimer that he would prefer to bring the sunken city of Rapture to life on the silver screen. Also signed on to the project is screenwriter John Logan, whose credits include Sweeney Todd, The Last Samurai, and Gladiator.

Oh, and did I mention that it’s gunning for an R rating?

We’re prepared to make it an R-rated movie. I don’t intuitively see it as PG-13. The content and the graphic nature of the story itself is smarter than that. It’s not for young kids.

The utopian references and the way the characters and world are drawn in that delightfully inspired Jules Verne and Ayn Rand style places the film in a more elevated realm. It’s the realm of a graphic novel. It has to have that edge.

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If you’re anything like me, you just squealed, flapped your hands around, and maybe peed a little (it happens).

While the last two Pirates movies have been almost universally criticized as being inferior to the original, they’ve still been entertaining popcorn fare fit for public consumption. And despite their flaws, the dynamic visual creativity that Verbinski showcases throughout the films has always been praiseworthy. Verbinski’s comments equating the source material with a graphic novel may suggest a highly stylized vision like many contemporary adaptations of the genre, though there exist valid concerns about the movie ending up as hyperstylized vapidity similar to The Spirit, 300, and Ang Lee’s Hulk. Hopefully the addition of John Logan will serve to anchor the project in Bioshock’s thought-provoking and dramatic narrative.

Bioshock is currently in pre-production and has a tentative release date scheduled sometime in 2010.

To sum up for the too-long-didn’t-read-crowd:

• Pirates of the Caribbean director will direct Bioshock instead of Pirates 4
• Uwe Boll will not be directing Bioshock
• The movie might actually not suck

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