Universal Pictures Wins Rights To Asteroids

Universal Pictures Wins Rights To Asteroids

Friday, July 03, 2009 - by Jennifer Johnson
A four-studio bidding war has ended and Universal Pictures has won the film rights to the classic Atari video game "Asteroids." Asteroids was originally released as an arcade game in 1979. In the game, players control a triangular spaceship as they attempt to shoot and destroy masses of rock and an occasional flying saucer while avoiding running into either obstruction.

Unlike today’s games, Asteroids lacks a story line or fancy world-building mythology so Universal Pictures must create a plot from scratch. The studio isn’t new to this process: It’s currently in the middle of creating plots for several popular board games from Hasbro including Battleship and Candyland.


Or maybe it might look a little more like this...

Matthew Lopez will write the script for the adaptation of the game to the big screen. Lopez came from Disney's writing program. He has worked on recent movies such as "Bedtime Stories" and "Race to Witch Mountain." He also wrote the most recent draft of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," which is currently being produced and stars Nicolas Cage and Jay Baruchel.

Via: Reuters | News Archive | Tags: Video Games, games, Movies, Universal Pictures, Asteroids, arcade games
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Comments

By 3vi1 on Jul 3, 2009

Uhmmm... lil' bit late?

The videogame has enough material for a nail-biting 8-minute scenario... trumped by the sequence we already saw when the Enterprise used the gravity of that asteroid to slingshot itself out of the field.

I can't believe that they would call the movie "Asteroids", as people might think it's a sequel to "Asteroid", nor can I think of anything they gain from the "story" that would have been deemed plagiarism. So what did they get?

i.e. I would immediately fire the person from my studio responsible for the bidding.

By 3vi1 on Jul 3, 2009

Disclaimer: Love the game and used to play it all the time.

By 3vi1 on Jul 3, 2009

>> Lopez came from Disney's writing program.

Oh crap... look for a wisecracking droid to banter with the ship AI / straight man.

By Dave_HH on Jul 3, 2009

Come on man! Where's your imagination! That's some serious special effects we could work on the screen! Just think, black, white, LINES... oh man! It'll be HUGE.

By 3vi1 on Jul 5, 2009

ROFL!

By Crisis Causer on Jul 9, 2009

I already know it will be better than the Super Mario Bros movie.

By Dev on Jul 9, 2009

I could imagine a documentary on early video games but a movie with a plot!

 

By mentaldisorder on Jul 10, 2009

Crisis Causer:

I already know it will be better than the Super Mario Bros movie.

Oh god, not that movie!

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