Universal has won a four-studio bidding war to pick up the film rights to the classic Atari video game "Asteroids." Matthew Lopez will write the script for the feature adaptation, which will be produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura.

In "Asteroids," initially released as an arcade game in 1979, a player controlled a triangular space ship in an asteroid field. The object was to shoot and destroy the hulking masses of rock and the occasional flying saucer while avoiding smashing into both.

As opposed to today's games, there is no story line or fancy world-building mythology, so the studio would be creating a plot from scratch. Universal, however, is used to that development process, as it's in the middle of doing just that for several of the Hasbro board game properties it is translating to the big screen, such as "Battleship" and "Candyland."

Senior vp of production Jeff Kirschenbaum will oversee the project for Universal.

Di Bonaventura's next outing is "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra," which Paramount is set to open Aug. 7.

Lopez came out of Disney's writing program and worked on that studio's recent movies "Bedtime Stories" and "Race to Witch Mountain." He also wrote the most recent draft of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," currently in production with Nicolas Cage and Jay Baruchel starring.

Lopez and Atari are repped by ICM.

Обсуждение новости на 3dnews:

Голливуд любит экранизировать видеоигры. Это касается не только современных блокбастеров вроде Gears of War, но и совсем старых продуктов, типа Pac-Man и Joust. Недавно стало известно, что киношники купили права на ещё один покрытый пылью хит — Asteriods от Atari.
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Непонятно только, что именно собираются экранизировать, ведь в игре практически нет сюжета. Определённо можно сказать лишь то, что в кино будут астероиды и космические корабли.

garafutdinov
Это будет первый голливудский фильм - скринсейвер

ilikeanime12: lol universal is making an Asteroids movie
MDidget: ...
MDidget: why?
ilikeanime12: I don't know
ilikeanime12: but hey
ilikeanime12: at least there is no plot for them to fuck up
ilikeanime12: unless they don't have an asteroid and a space ship in the movie
ilikeanime12: in which case yeah they fucked up