Seriously, Asteroids The Movie?

By  |  Thursday, July 2, 2009 at 1:19 pm

asteroids1According to The Hollywood Reporter, the classic 1979 arcade game Asteroids will be made into a movie.

No joke, Universal has picked up the film rights, prevailing in a bidding war against three other studios. Matthew Lopez, whose writing credits include Race to Witch Mountain and Bedtime Stories, will pen the script. Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who produced both Transformers movies and, fittingly, Doom, will be the producer.

Now, I tend to be skeptical when it comes to nostalgia acts — I skipped the 2007 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie on principle — but this idea is truly wacky. We’re of course talking about a video game that had no plot, no characters and really, no reason to be reincarnated in any form. Asteroids is a game whose most interesting development is the occasional appearance of a flying saucer that fires bullets at random angles (so you can bet this movie will have aliens!).

One could argue that Asteroids’ complete lack of substance opens the door to limitless possibilities, but then isn’t this movie just a cheap use of name recognition to cover for generic space opera? Unless Asteroids the movie features an endless battle against free-floating rocks, complete with ruminations on the inevitability of death, I won’t be moved.

 
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5 Comments For This Post

  1. Steve Says:
    July 2nd, 2009 at 3:06 pm

    LOL this is funny stuff… Lets watch a movie on spaceships blowing up asteroids!! I mean I like the game and everything, but a movie? come on.

  2. tom B Says:
    July 2nd, 2009 at 4:33 pm

    Gotta be at least as interesting as Jerry Springer.

  3. Steven Fisher Says:
    July 2nd, 2009 at 4:42 pm

    Trapped in deep space alone with only his asteroid mining ship, Captain Blake Blade experiences humanity’s first contact with an alien species — any alien spaces! But they shoot first, and he barely escapes with his life!

    Can Blake continue cleaning up the asteroids before a collision sends the entire field streaking towards Earth, or will the asteroids and the aliens be too much for him?

  4. Backlin Says:
    July 3rd, 2009 at 7:32 pm

    I almost couldn’t believe the title, but I definitely can’t believe there was actually a bidding war over this!

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2 Trackbacks For This Post

  1. Announcements « Toxic Blog’s Bag Says:
    July 2nd, 2009 at 2:17 pm

    […] posted a link to a Hollywood Reporter article: the 1979 arcade game Asteroids is going to be made into a movie. “Universal has won a four-studio bidding war to pick up the film rights to the classic Atari […]

  2. Oh No, Not RollerCoaster Tycoon: The Movie Says:
    May 13th, 2010 at 10:30 pm

    […] let’s count off game-based movies whose plots are a mystery. I previously wrote about Universal’s plans to make a movie based on the arcade classic Asteroids. Since then, Warner has negotiated with Taito […]