Tetris Is Getting Its Own Movie, Because Shapes And Lines And Stuff
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And here I thought I would never again have the Tetris theme song echoing around my noggin, silently tempting me to dig out my Gameboy and play one more game. However, the future is destined to give the game’s signature chiptune tracks an orchestral makeover, as Tetris Company is teaming up with Threshold Entertainment to turn this shape-based franchised into a huge science fiction movie. You know that really, really great idea you had for a movie? Tetris is getting made instead.
Let’s get something clear right away here: this isn’t going to just be a Tetris game projected onto a big screen. “It’s a very big, epic sci-fi movie,” said Threshold CEO Larry Kasanoff to The Wall Street Journal. “This isn’t a movie with a bunch of lines running around the page. We’re not giving feet to geometric shapes.” While I’m perfectly happy to hear that we won’t be hearing about casting calls looking for “L-shaped actors,” I’m having a little trouble believing in Kasanoff’s energy when he’s referring to “pages” as the medium by which this film’s characters would be experienced. How many pages do you guys think this movie will be?
Anyway, Kasanoff and Threshold want to build the Tetris brand into something bigger than just a retro video game experience. “We have a story behind Tetris which makes it a much more imaginative thing,” he continued. There are those parts in the game when rockets take off. Maybe the story is based on those rockets. Or maybe it’s like the upcoming horror Oujia, where the game itself is just a part of the medium, rather than as a form of direct source material.
Let it be lost on no one that this project’s existence was actually predicted a couple of years ago with the excellent trailer below.
You have to hand it to Kasanoff for truly believing in this idea, which he goes on to call “the teeny tip of an iceberg that has intergalactic significance.” (That sentence alone just takes a certain amount of guts to force from your lips.) And if Tetris indeed takes the world by storm, Kasanoff and his crew “certainly have the canvas for location-based entertainment based on the epicness.” So…beach Tetris and mall Tetris?
Okay, my guard has been dropped and destroyed. I completely give in to Kasanoff and Threshold Entertainment. I cannot wait for Tetris. I must have Tetris. Sing with me!
If you’re interested in more upcoming sci-fi video game adaptations, Crakcle has their Dead Rising: Watchtower heading into production, and we’re ironically anticipating Adam Sandler and Kevin James in the invasion comedy adventure Pixels.
