Not for no reason is Irrational Games’ BioShock frequently cited as one of the greatest games of the 21st century – if not one of the best games ever made. Set in a haunting underwater city with ravaged opulence around every corner, BioShock is moving, scary, shocking, well-scripted and incredibly atmospheric.

As is often the case with successful games, it wasn’t long before people were clamoring for a movie adaptation, and Hollywood soon obliged by putting a BioShock movie into development with Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski attached to direct it. Eventually, however, Verbinski dropped out after being given a choice between making it a PG-13 movie or cutting $120 million off the budget, and shortly thereafter Irrational Games’ Ken Levine axed the project altogether.

Whether BioShock would have worked (or could still work) as a movie is debatable, as a lot of the subtext in the original game was tied up with the experience of actually playing video games, but it certainly would have been worthwhile to see Rapture and colorful characters like Sander Cohen, Andrew Ryan and Brigid Tenenbaum brought to life.

Although the film never came to fruition, concept designer Kasra Farahani still has a gallery of concept art that he put together for Oscar-winning production designer Rick Heinrichs (Sleepy Hollow).

The concept art appears to depict a power station where the Plasmid-powering drug called Eve is drawn from the bodies of Rapture’s Little Sisters and fed into adult characters. It looks like some kind of showdown takes place between a Big Daddy and the human character, and the final image shows the ever-heartbreaking sight of a Little Sister looking at a fallen Big Daddy.

The sets depicted in the artwork definitely look more cavernous than those in BioShock and they give the impression that Verbinski was planning a new story rather than a straight adaptation of the game’s story. There’s also a heavily industrial feel that’s reflected in Jim Martin’s concept art for the movie, which featured a mix of interior and exterior locations.

It’s certainly easy to see why Verbinski was reluctant to try and make this particular movie for $80 million, but perhaps one day another filmmaker will have a go at bringing Rapture to the big screen.