China to Help Drop $80 Million Sci-Fi Thriller Tetris the Movie
Foywonder
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If you’re wondering why a horror website is reporting on Tetris the Movie, then let me direct you once more to the headline for this article. This is actually happening, people!
Yes, Virgina, there will be a Tetris movie. China will co-finance it. The budget will be in the $80 million range. The emphasis will be on transforming the quarter century old video game about falling geometric shapes into a dark sci-fi thriller.
One more mind-boggling detail: Tetris the Movie is being conceived as a part one in a trilogy.
Deadline reports that Chinese-US co-production company Threshold Global Studios is prepping Tetris the Movie as its inaugural effort. Threshold moguls Bruno Wu and Mark Kassanoff (Mortal Kombat movie producer) have spent a year planning this epic video game movie, secured $80 million in financing, and plan to shoot the film in China and other countries next year.
So, how does one envision a movie based on a plotless video game that was already more or less brought to big screen life just a year ago in Pixels, a movie most everyone domestically seemed to hate but still tripled its budget thanks to the global box office? As a sci-fi thriller, of course. Kassanoff gave Deadline the money quote to end all money quotes: …it’s “not at all what you think; it will be a cool surprise.”
How exactly Tetris fits the dark sci-fi thriller mode remains to be seen because details are being kept under wraps at the moment.
Could Tetris the Movie go the Cronenberg Human Centipede body horror route by featuring a mad scientist transforming people of varying ethnicities into twisted, geometric shapes that he then uses to play his own warped version of the classic game?
Or perhaps they’ll take it into Roland Emmerich territory with Earth being bombarded by multi-colored geometric shapes from space that lock into place for extraterrestrial infrastructures that begin terraforming the planet prior to a full-scale invasion, and the only person who can save us is Jayden Smith as an autistic Tetris-playing whiz kid?
Maybe it just boils down to being more of a Michael Chricton-esque techno-thriller in which the classic Tetris game is the code that needs to be cracked in order to launch/prevent a global terrorist attack.
Whatever the plan is, we’ll find out eventually when Tetris the Movie miraculously beats off other recently announced movie adaptations of old video games (Asteroids, Rampage, Missile Command, Centipede) to the big screen. If they pull it off, then yes, it truly will be a cool surprise. Cool surprise or cinematic trainwreck. Either way, I cannot wait to see what becomes of Tetris the Movie.
Should also mention Threshold Global Studios possesses the movie rights to the video game Deathtrap Dungeon. Remember that one? I don’t. But I bet I know someone who could help bring that one to the big screen. Paging Dr.Boll… Dr. Uwe Boll…
Categorized:News
