Universal Lands Rights To Asteroids Movie

It seems Universal Studios has won the highly sought-after movie rights to the 1979 Atari game Asteroids. Disney's Matthew Lopez will be writing the adaptation, having previously worked on the scripts for Bedtime Stories, The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Race to Witch Mountain. The NY Times is skeptical about Hollywood's ability to do right by the 30-year-old game, already imagining what a director like Michael Bay would do with it: "In this $300 million, three-and-a-half hour spectacle, loud and expensive computer simulations of large boulders crashing into one another are briefly interrupted by the hilarious antics of Chip and Gravel, two living rocks with gold teeth who speak in hip-hop slang, and the nonstop shouting of John Turturro."

Comments

I was seriously just thinking about that.

[jayme0227]

Man, I was seriously just thinking about how great/stupid it would be to make a game out of asteroids last night. Seriously, the game had no story line, so you could be as creative as you wanted, but the movie would likely have NOTHING to do with the game other than the title and a few really crappy circumstances to call for a ship blowing up asteroids.

Re:I was seriously just thinking about that.

[Anonymous Coward]

So in other words, they already made this movie and it was called Armageddon.

Re:I was seriously just thinking about that.

[TheRaven64]

I don't really understand what you need to license. Asteroids had two concepts:

• There is a ship piloted by a human.
• The ship needs to destroy asteroids and not crash into them.

In some versions there were also aliens you could shoot for more points. Was it ever explained in the game why the ship was shooting asteroids? Or who the aliens were? Or where the asteroid field was? Or, indeed, anything back-story related? Surely you don't need to license anyone's IP to make a film which involves a ship shooting at asteroids.

Re:How can this be anything but lame?

[bhunachchicken]

"There are many better games to make movies from. (Deus Ex, Thief, Zelda, Golden Axe, heck - even Pitfall or Pac Man would be better)."

Dude, you're forgetting one thing - this is Hollywood making a movie out of a game. It matters little how good the original game was, the result will always be bad.

I've not seen a lot of them, but in the world of game-to-movie conversions I think that Mortal Kombat was the only half decent effort; and even that still made for eye watering viewing throughout most of it.

This Enders Game (etc)??

[RabidMonkey]

If this gets made into a movie before something like Enders Game, I'm giving up completely on HollyWood.

I'm tired of seeing horrible movie after horrible movie come out, when there are fantastic stories waiting to be made into great movies (or, be done horribly, I'll concede).

Video game movies just don't work.

Re:How can this be anything but lame?

[tverbeek]

Once upon a time, a game could be just A Game. It didn't need a story or characters, just an entertaining activity. Like checkers or poker or tag. That was Asteroids, another classic.

What baffles me is that anybody paid money for the rights.... to what, exactly? There's no plot, no characters. Just a premise (aka "idea", which cannot be copyrighted), and a trademark: "Asteroids". All they're getting for their money is pile of middle-aged goodwill/nostalgia attached to the name.

The good news is that this movie has the potential to be far better than the new Mighty Transformin' Power Rangers film TFA is making fun of, because there's so much room to add a story. The bad news is that they probably won't, or the one they add will suck.