Generation Y, where you guys at? If you grew up playing the popular tile-matching puzzle video game, “Tetris”, then this is going to blow your mind.
A Chinese-American movie studio wants to turn it into a live-action sci-fi thriller flick. For real.
Tetris (the game) was originally designed and programmed by Russian game designer Alexey Pajitnov. Released in 1984, it was the first entertainment software to be exported from the USSR to the US. Many variants of the game were made available for nearly every video game console and computer operating system, as well as on devices such as graphing calculators, mobile phones, portable media players, PDAs, etc.
But fans would remember it most for the hugely successful handheld version for Nintendo’s Game Boy. Launched in 1989, the Game Boy version established the game as one of the most popular ever. In 2005, Tetris came in 3rd place in IGN’s “100 Greatest Video Games of All Time”, the 2nd being “Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” while the 1st place went to “Super Mario Bros”.
To date, Tetris has been downloaded over 500 million times as a mobile game.
According to CBC News, the USD80 million “Tetris The Movie” project is the first from the newly formed Threshold Global Studios, a joint venture between Chinese entertainment investor Bruno Wu’s Seven Star Works and producer Larry Kasanoff’s (of “Mortal Kombat” fame) California-based Threshold Entertainment Group, which produces live action movies.
In a statement released by the studio on Tuesday (17th May), the joint venture “will make cross-cultural movies for the global market. Larry Kasanoff added that the 32-year-old video game Tetris “is a perfect first project for this strategy”.
Some things to know about the film:
- Threshold Global Studios has been working with The Tetris Company for over a year on developing the idea.
- “Tetris The Movie” will reportedly be a first part of a trilogy.
- The story has already been created and there are plans to feature a Chinese cast.
- Shooting will begin in 2017 in China and other undisclosed locations.
- Bruno Wu Wu and Larry Kasanoff will co-produce. Threshold Global Studios’ Jimmy Ienner is executive producing with The Tetris Company and Seven Star Works.
No casting details or a release date for “Tetris The Movie” have been confirmed yet, but we’ll be updating this post with more information as soon as we get ’em details.
This is not the first time that a popular video game is seeing a movie adaptation as video game makers have been busy monetising their respective intellectual properties. In recent times, popular games such as “Angry Birds“, “Assassin’s Creed“, “Warcraft“, and “Pixels” (a play on iconic characters) crossed over to the cinematic universe.
But whether or not a live-action sci-fi Tetris film will turn out to be as thrilling as they say, remains to be seen. Meanwhile, here’s a list of what we think are some of the most memorable video game-turned-movies of all time.
Sources: CBC News, Deadline, IGN, CNBC, The Independent / Featured image: classicconsoleblog.blogspot.com.
