Atari Video Game ‘Asteroids’ Headed To The Big Screen
Atari's video game 'Asteroids'
Universal Pictures have scored the rights over three other studios to adapt Atari’s classic 1979 video game Asteroids into a full length feature film.
If you’re not as old as me and don’t know what Asteroids is (which would be odd since the game has spawned numerous versions of itself over the last thirty years), it’s that game where you have a triangle that represents a ship and you shoot other odd shapes that represent asteroids as they fly at and passed you whilst also trying to take out the odd flying saucer. Sounds like a crappy game but in its day it was one of the best and oh so addictive.
Matt Lopez has been hired to write the screenplay. Lopez’s previous credits include Race to Witch Mountain, Bedtime Stories and The Wild. His upcoming films include The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and My Samurai. Given the summary of the game above is the full background story Lopez has virtually a blank slate with which he can develop the plot of the new film. When you think about that you can’t help but wonder why there was ever a need for a bidding war to secure the rights to the adaptation since, well, there’s virtually nothing to adapt.
In any case, the film will be produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura whose previous productions include Stardust, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra, Constantine and Doom.
It’s too early to confirm additional details.
July 2nd, 2009 at 5:55 pm
I could save Lopez some time with his script. I’ll even stay true to the source material:
Triangle shoots dots into somewhat circular shapes. Shapes break into smaller shapes. The end.
Seriously–four studios were locked in a bidding war over the film rights to a completely plotless game? Don’t they have any better films they could be making?