Asteroids, the Movie (or: Hollywood has truly run out of ideas)

[Trippy]

Four studios were in a bidding-war to land the film rights to a video game with no story...

As depressing as this sounds the 2nd to last paragraph below makes it even worse.


"Asteroids" lands at Universal

By Borys Kit Borys Kit – Thu Jul 2, 10:13 pm ET

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Universal Pictures 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.

In "Asteroids," originally released as an arcade game in 1979, a player controlled a triangular spaceship 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. Universal is familiar with such a development process: It's in the middle of doing just that for several of the Hasbro board-game properties it's translating to the big screen, among them "Battleship" and "Candyland."

Lopez came out of Disney's writing program and worked on that studio's recent movies "Bedtime Stories" and "Race to Witch Mountain." He also wrote the most recent draft of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," currently in production with Nicolas Cage and Jay Baruchel starring.

[schild]

The mind reels.

[IainC]

What actually are you buying when you pick up the rights to Asteroids?

If you really want to make a movie about shooting space rocks then you'd have more to fear from the makers of Armageddon than from Atari surely?

[Trippy]

What actually are you buying when you pick up the rights to Asteroids?

The title and...that's about it.

[schild]

What actually are you buying when you pick up the rights to Asteroids?

The title and...that's about it.

So, nothing.

Awesome.

[Tebonas]

They are bit late for that...


Movies named Asteroids

[schild]

They are bit late for that...


Movies named Asteroids

VG means Video Game.

There are no movies named Asteroids.

[Trippy]

Dang schild beat me to it.

[Tebonas]

Asteroids: Deadly Impact is close enough for my tastes that it is wasted money. "Thats the real Asteroids franchine, not that Deadly Impact pretender. See we are shooting at Asteroids for 1 and a half hours while rapidly spinning around in our Spaceship".

[Oban]

Do kids even know what Asteroids is/was?  I played it in the arcade when I was a kid a few times, but that was when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.  I am sure it is the reason why I still prefer trackballs to mice.

Oh, and a Candyland movie by Guillermo del Toro would be excellent.

[Trippy]

Do kids even know what Asteroids is/was?  I played it in the arcade when I was a kid a few times, but that was when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.  I am sure it is the reason why I still prefer trackballs to mice.

Oh, and a Candyland movie by Guillermo del Toro would be excellent.

Asteriods didn't use a trackball. You might be thinking of Missile Command.

[Falconeer]

I am sure it is the reason why I still prefer trackballs to mice.

That was a paddle, not a trackball.

[Trippy]

I am sure it is the reason why I still prefer trackballs to mice.

That was a paddle, not a trackball.

Asteroids didn't use a paddle to turn rotate, it used regular buttons. Tempest, among other games, used a paddle.

http://www.rgcpinball.com/images/Asteroids.jpg

[IainC]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHY8NKj3RKs

[Trippy]

WTF?

[Merusk]

Battleship the movie based on the boardgame?    Candyland you can at least make up some narrative about since it has places and characters, but BS? That IS taking Minesweeper and turning it into a movie, but with a WW2 setting.

[Chimpy]

I liked what the guy at Arstechnica had to say about it:

While there are some big Hollywood players involved with this project, the inherent problem with making a movie out of Asteroids is that it doesn't have a plot, or characters, just a triangular spaceship blowing up some oddly-shaped polygons.

On the other hand, one could look at this with the perspective that it's pretty much impossible to screw up the game's story. However, this news implies something much larger and much more unsettling: Hollywood may officially be out of original movie ideas.

[Falconeer]

I am sure it is the reason why I still prefer trackballs to mice.

That was a paddle, not a trackball.

Asteroids didn't use a paddle to turn rotate, it used regular buttons. Tempest, among other games, used a paddle.

http://www.rgcpinball.com/images/Asteroids.jpg

Ouch! I stand corrected while correcting! I doublesuck!

[Samwise]

We have an Asteroids arcade cabinet at my office.  I was reigning champ for a while, but am probably way out of practice now.  You need a lot of caffeine to play that game well.

[Oban]

You sir are correct.

Liberator and Reactor for the win.

[Arnold]

Sinistar would be a better choice than Asteroids.

[Sheepherder]

Sinistar Anything would be a better choice than Asteroids.

[Khaldun]

It's not that making a film on a slim to non-existent premise is the odd thing. The odd thing is choosing to *pay* for a slim to non-existent premise. If you sat down and said, "Let's make a SF film about asteroid miners", that's free. Seriously, nobody's gonna come after you for infringement. If you say, "Let's make a SF film about shooting asteroids so they don't hit Earth", the game Asteroids is the least of your infringement worries.

So this is not an indictment of Hollywood's lack of creativity. That is whatever it is. It's an indictment of its insane profligacy, but even that is more complicated than it appears. What I think we have here is a kind of half-assed cabal, a sort of financial circle jerk--pay that guy for some IP so that some day he'll pay us for some IP, regardless of whether either of us actually needs it, and all of us as middlemen will laugh on the way to the bank while the suckers funnelling cash to us keep doing so in hopes that we'll pay off big with a blockbuster sooner or later.

[sigil]

Asteroids, from the alien ships perspective?

Captain! We're stuck on this heading! We've lost all control and are flying into an asteroid field!!!1!

No problem, we can phase through them...make repairs now.

Captain, unidentified object detected... Massive energy reading!

What the fuck is THAT?!? Fire weapons!

Targeting system failed Captain!

Oh shi-

[Triforcer]

We need another Super Mario Brothers movie.  The first was pure  if you are into  , and Dennis Hopper's greatest role ever. 

[Nevermore]

They could have saved themselves a lot of money by just picking a random word out of a dictionary and making a movie based on it.

[Oban]

Obsecratory, the movie!

[HaemishM]

How do people keep getting paid for absolutely fucking nothing?

I have about 100 ideas Hollywood can have for $100k each.

[Nevermore]

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