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Friday
03Jul2009

Game Over: 'Asteroids' Becoming a Movie

DateFriday, July 3, 2009 at 10:15AM
Thirty years ago, Asteroids was released as a video game, helping usher in the demand for quarters that would continue unabated for about 15 years. Along with Space Invaders, Asteroids was one of the first major arcade games, and it helped put Atari on the map.

Now, it will join a diverse and risky collection of consumer products being built at Universal. The Hollywood Reporter says that da U beat three other studios to snag the film rights to Asteroids, which will be written (and to a certain degree, invented out of thin air, by Matthew Lopez). This year, Universal has signed up to develop movies based on board games (Candy Land and Battleship) as well as toys (Stretch Armstrong).

Video game movies already have a bad history, and I don't know if it's good that a story will have to be created around the lone spaceship shooting up space rocks. You could see this having some Star Trek swagger, although I think to separate it from other movies in the arena, Asteroids might work better as a lone pilot who has to shoot his way back home or protect his isolated but important military outpost from completely inanimate objects hurtling through the nothingness.

I'm not over the moon - pardon the pun - about the assignment going to Lopez; his Bedtime Stories and Race to Witch Mountain are both pretty average.

The sale of an Atari product immediately makes me wonder what's next on that front. I know it's technically an ActiVision game first developed for Atari, but I've been screaming for a Pitfall movie since the early 1980s. I hope they get around to that one day.

AuthorColin Boyd | | in | Print ArticlePrint Article | | CommentPost a Comment |

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