"Bioshock" was an amazing platform game built for gaming consoles, and many feel it will be a great movie. But one thing Universal Pictures doesn't want it to be is an expensive movie.

With budget lines heading into the $160 million range, Universal has decided to shelve "Bioshock" for now until director Gore Verbinski and his crew can figure out how to make this movie on the cheap, according to trade publication Variety. That could mean moving the film from California to England.

"We were asked by Universal to move the film outside the U.S. to take advantage of a tax credit," Verbinski said. "We are evaluating whether this is something we want to do. In the meantime, the film is in a holding pattern."

Finding tax credits and government payouts is not just a bad economy thing. It's what Hollywood has been looking to take advantage of for years, explaining why many films end up in Canada, where cities like Vancouver and Toronto have offered significant financial incentives and tax credits to lure a lot of production to those cities. In fact, the second season of "Fringe" on Fox will move from New York City to Vancouver this summer to take advantage of a cash incentive there after moving from its pilot city of Toronto to use money being offered by Albany that has since dried up.

Where "Bioshock" actually shoots likely won't matter. Exteriors will be an underwater city called Rapture anyway, something that likely will be created using special effects rather than real-life location shoots.

After big-budget films became all the vogue following "Titanic" in 1997, studios have been really scaling back on outlandish costs for films, as it's not always turning into automatic profit for studios in a time when many of them can't afford to have too many losers on the books. "Watchmen" was a perfect example of that with an estimated budget of $100 million, and earning just $106 million in the North American box office since last weekend.

When it's all said in done, "Watchmen" will end up in the black, as many films do, but the margins will likely not be anywhere near what Warner Bros. had hoped. And with Twentieth Century Fox holding out its hand for its share of the profits over a legal battle on who had the rights to the comic property, it might be a tight profit indeed.

But unlike "Halo," which was cancelled after both Universal and Fox panicked over the budget, "Bioshock" is still on track to be made one way or the other, Universal insists.

The game was released in 2007 and was widely celebrated by critics, leading to work on a second "Bioshock" and getting Universal to pay dearly for the rights to make it into a film.

The script is being written by John Logan, who was nominated for an Oscar for "Gladiator" and also wrote "Star Trek: Nemesis" in 2002.