Screenhead

Amazing!  I remember playing this game as a kid and can’t believe that a story will actually come from this simple Atari video game. It looks like it will happen because Universal has won a four-studio bidding war to pick up the film rights to the classic Atari video game “Asteroids.” Matthew Lopez will write the script for the feature adaptation, which will be produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura.

As I remember, the concept of the game was so simple.  A player controlled a triangular space ship in an asteroid field. The object was to shoot and destroy the hulking masses of rock and the occasional flying saucer while avoiding smashing into both. 

As opposed to today’s games, there is no story line or fancy world-building mythology, so the studio would be creating a plot from scratch. I can’t imagine what that story would be about that could keep an audience interest for at least an hour and a half.  But I guess, Universal is used to that development process because, according to THR, the studio is in the middle of doing just that for several of the Hasbro board game properties it is translating to the big screen, such as “Battleship” and “Candyland.”

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