I don’t know how these deals happen in Hollywood, but somehow before games like Syphon Filter, Parasite Eve, Journey and Fear Effect nabbed a movie, the age-old classic Tetris is getting its own film.
According to a brief but appropriately flippant article from Vulture revealed that producer Larry Kasanoff has signed a deal with Chinese billionaire Bruno Wu, together putting a massive $80 million into the production of the cross-cultural collaboration to bring the brick-busting game to theaters around the world.
A majority of the funds are coming from the Chinese side of the isle, so the cast will mostly be from China. I have no idea who they could possibly cast that wouldn’t seem out of place, let’s hope none of the greats like Donnie Yen, Wu Jing, Chow Yun Fat, Simon Lam or Tony Leung go anywhere near the bound-to-be-a-bomb blockbuster. In fact, I’m already getting shades of Peter Berg’s Battleship slipping into the mind, and that’s not a good thing at all.
According to Deadline, this isn’t a joke and some big players have been involved in Bruno Wu’s endeavors, as they write…
“Wu announced plans for a movie based on the falling shapes game last year as he unveiled a $1.6B global content fund in partnership with Yucheng Group’s Muse Era. He also has deals with Justin Lin’s Perfect Storm and producer Avi Arad.”
If you scoot on over to the IMDB page for Avi Arad you’ll note that he has a number of video-game based properties in the works, along with the fan-contested Ghost In The Shell and the Kojima-free production of Metal Gear Solid. There’s also a listing for Arad’s name next to the Uncharted movie, but I can’t possibly see that turning out any better than Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End.
Anyway, they don’t say when exactly this Tetris movie will be arriving but I don’t have high hopes for it. In fact, I expect it to be no less headache inducing than Tetris MLG Edition.