Tetris Live-Action Movie Is Falling Into Place

[Fanghawk]

Tetris Live-Action Movie Is Falling Into Place

Tetris is up for a live-action film adaptation from Lawrence Kasanoff, the producer behind 1995's Mortal Kombat.

Remember when <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/5733-Battleship>the Battleship movie was announced and we thought we'd reached the pinnacle of silly film adaptation concepts? Well, now we have a new contender for the crown: <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/tetris>Tetris has been licensed to Threshold Entertainment for a live-action theatrical release.

"It's a very big, epic sci-fi movie," Threshold CEO Lawrence Kasanoff said. "This isn't a movie with a bunch of lines running around the page. We're not giving feet to the geometric shapes."

Tetris debuted in 1984 as a tile-matching puzzle game that quickly became one of the most widely-recognized electronic titles of all time. Trouble is, it literally has no plot to speak of, so the adaptation is largely running on brand recognition at this point. According to Kasanoff a story is in place, although specific details have yet to be revealed. Kasanoff also hopes to expand Tetris from the big screen to "location-based entertainment", presumably inspired by Threshold Entertainment's <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_Entertainment#Theme_park_films>theme park films.

"Brands are the new stars of Hollywood," he said. "We have a story behind Tetris which makes it a much more imaginative thing."

It's worth noting that this is only a development deal, as Tetris currently has no directors or cast. To his credit, Kasanoff is no stranger to video game adaptations, having produced Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation in the 1990s. That being said, Tetris is a very different beast, so we'll have to wait and see what his sci-fi approach entails.

Source: Time

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[Andy Shandy]

But I thought we already had a Tetris movie...

 

[Lightknight]

I'm conflicted. On the one hand I love the title of this article that this scenario has allowed, on the other it is horrifying how deeply the barrel of existing IPs is getting scraped here.

 

[Mr.Mattress]

... Are you guys serious? ...

... You guys are serious, aren't you? ...

... Alright, time to bring this in:

This film is going to be worse then Battleship.

 

[Ratty]

"Brands are the new stars of Hollywood," he said. "We have a story behind Tetris which makes it a much more imaginative thing."

Pfff yeah ok. Well the director of Mortal Kombat got a free ride to direct all his wife-Mary-Sue Resident Evil movies (and tried for years to get his claws on Castlevania) so I don't see why a MK producer would hang back. But come on.

I understand that modern Hollywood is all about brand recognition, but Tetris isn't a hot new release. Just like Battleship it's something you recognize but you're probably not absolutely wild about. While everyone has heard the name almost everyone also realizes it's just a puzzle game without a story. It's not like Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland which cashed in on over a hundred years of fond memories of the book and 50 years of the animated movie.

But I thought we already had a Tetris movie.

Still waiting on that Minesweeper movie from 7 years ago.

 

[JenSeven]

For some reason I'm imagining something like Hackers, only much dumber and with a bizarre, out of place sci-fi theme thrown in.
Maybe something with a global virus who's code can be unlocked using something like tetris or so.

Yeah, I'm imagining something that incredibly dumb.
And it probably will be much worse.

 

[AT God]

I definitely have to watch this if it comes out. However, reading this article killed my initial thought of how a tetris movie would work. I was hoping for a SyFy Sharknado quality film that is a bad horror movie where tetraminos fall from the sky constantly onto major cities, killing people violently with bad CGI crushing effects.

Really hope the tetris theme gets a nice dark, orchestral cover and plays often through out the movie.

 

[Elijah Newton]

Penny Arcade : prophets of the modern age.

From 2003 :

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/01/24/why-the-hell-not

 

[deth2munkies]

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

Is nothing sacred anymore? Leave the old franchises alone

 

[Pyrian]

Kudos on the title. Painful, but appropriate.

 

[Furbyz]

They could Armageddon it. Giant tiled asteroids are heading to Earth one at a time, and the only way to ensure the survival of the planet is to stack them all together so that they'll explode at once. I feel like giant robots and possibly attractive women should be thrown in for some reason, and I've just described the next Transformers, haven't I?

Ok, new plan.
This guy challenges all mankind to prove their worth or be destroyed a la Galactus.

 

[Callate]

Heh heh heh.

You wanna make a movie based on Tetris, eh?

C'mere.



No, no, seriously. Come here.

 

[CaitSeith]

Spoiler: I wonder if they will get the plot from here

0:50 to skip the boring intro.

 

[Sabrestar]

It'll be a cyberpunk retelling of the Korobeiniki story.

(Korobeiniki is a Russian folktale. The song version is the TYPE-A theme you probably know as the Tetris theme.)

 

[Tortilla the Hun]

There is an astonishing amount of clairvoyance on display here, any more future-readers and The Escapist might start looking like a site for psychics. Seriously, I can understand having real doubt--I'm not particularly confident in the movie's success myself--but people are already claiming failure to be the only outcome when basically nothing has been said about the movie other than it will exist and it has a genre.

I'll be waiting to see how it shapes up, but I think the fact that there's no story behind Tetris allows quite a bit of writing freedom. I'm imagining something along the lines of a factory worker arranging things in a very Tetris-like manner, something happens for the worker to want to change the monotony of the arrangements. Would it be predictable? Probably, though that doesn't necessarily mean it won't be enjoyable.

 

[vid87]

Wha--

Okay, calm down. Maybe it'll be something more personal, like a drama about a gamer in a Tetris tournament who discovers the power of self-accep--

"It's a very big, epic sci-fi movie"

Do you people just enjoy pissing away millions of dollars?

 

[tzimize]

... Are you guys serious? ...

... You guys are serious, aren't you? ...

... Alright, time to bring this in:

This film is going to be worse then Battleship.

The phrase "Epic sci-fi" made me want to facepalm. What are they DOING over at Hollywood? What other potentially better script did they pass up to decide to make this?

Hahahahahahaha, oh shit! When I think this thing cant get any more mindbogglingly stupid, you go and point out something like that. Now I really cant stop thinking about it. Somewhere there is a/severl movie ideas that were scrapped...instead of scrapping this. Hahahahaha, oh dear this is just....I have no words....

Captcha: Hardened prestoopnicks. Well captcha....I said I had no words....and you provide some. I'm not sure they're the ones I need....but thanks anyway.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

They could Armageddon it. Giant tiled asteroids are heading to Earth one at a time, and the only way to ensure the survival of the planet is to stack them all together so that they'll explode at once. I feel like giant robots and possibly attractive women should be thrown in for some reason, and I've just described the next Transformers, haven't I?

Shockingly similar to the premise I came up with:

Hundreds of massive, perfect geometric shapes are on a trajectory with the Earth. The attack is clearly of an alien origin, for such perfect shapes wouldn't occur in the natural world

A lesser known, often ignored but brilliant scientist has a plan to save the earth. But nobody will listen. Through great difficulty he manages to sneak into the white house and propose his plan. The president says "We might just have a shot at this..." and immediately orders construction on the project.

The plan? Construct a giant box that will destroy the geometric shapes by sending a powerful electric charge through the blocks. Only hitch is that the lines need to stretch across the entire width of the box otherwise the circuit can't complete.

To successfully save the earth, they need to send teams to intercept the shapes and outfit them with thrusters that will allow the careful and precise maneuvering required to sort the shapes in the giant box in a way that allows the circuits to incinerate them.

The only black man dies in a heroic effort to attach the last thruster to a block, trapping him as he gets crushed between two of them.

 

[Flatfrog]

There is an astonishing amount of clairvoyance on display here, any more future-readers and The Escapist might start looking like a site for psychics. Seriously, I can understand having real doubt--I'm not particularly confident in the movie's success myself--but people are already claiming failure to be the only outcome when basically nothing has been said about the movie other than it will exist and it has a genre.

No, sorry, in this case there are only two options:

1) The film attempts to make some kind of story out of the game of Tetris. This cannot be done in any way that is not stupid.
2) The film attempts to make some kind of story and vaguely tie it in to the Tetris brand somehow. This will be irritating as fuck.

The reason Battleship was so obviously a bad idea is because it has exactly the same issue, and its failure was inevitable. Their only option, as here, was to go down route 2, and the result was a movie that was simultaneously dumb and only vaguely connected to Battleship.

It doesn't help that they've chosen to make a movie that has been the go-to joke for 'wouldn't this be the worst possible idea for a movie based on a game?' for decades.

I'm not saying it isn't possible to make a decent movie with some tangential connection to Tetris (perhaps in some Tron-like world) but I will eat every hat I possess if it happens.