Live-Action Tetris Movie Secures $80 Million Funding, Plans To Be Part Of A Trilogy (arstechnica.com) 122
An anonymous reader writes: In 2014, Threshold Entertainment announced it would be producing a live-action film based on the Russian stacking game Tetris. Today, Threshold Entertainment announced it had secured $80 million in funding for the project. Threshold's Larry Kasanoff has worked on the Mortal Kombat film in 1995, which grossed $70 million. Media mogul Bruno Wu, will serve as co-producer on the film ensuring that the movie will be able to sustain any unplanned budget overruns. According to Deadline, the film is planned for a 2017 release with Chinese locations and a Chinese case. However, Kasanoff notes "the goal is to make world movies for the world market." What's more is that the movie could be the basis of a trilogy, the producer says, with a plot that's "not at all what you think; it will be a cool surprise." Kasanoff told the Wall Street Journal that "this isn't a movie with a bunch of lines running around the page. We're not giving feet to the geometric shapes... What you [will] see in Tetris is the teeny tip of an iceberg that has intergalactic significance."
Pong (Score:5, Funny)
I'm still waiting for the movie adaption of "Pong."
Re:Pong (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Pong (Score:1)
No, no that's just the lead roles. The background extras are all black.
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hunt the wumpus
wumpus 2, its back
wumpus next generation
batsnatches, the epilogue
(that should do it. keep them busy for a least 6 months)
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Pfft, learn to spell, it's Balls of Furry!
Re:Pong (Score:5, Funny)
I hear it's being held up on production by some back-and-forth between the lead talents.
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posting to fix f'ed up moderation
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The Tetris movie reminds me of this [youtube.com]
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LOL, I had the same thought the other day when I saw an ad for the Angry Birds movie. Then I thought: Tic Tac Toe.
Part 2, O what did I do?
Part 3, X marks the spot--search for the hidden strategy.
and finally... Tic Tac Toe, IV--You won't believe how this stand-off ends!
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Tic Tac Toe. They just can use plot for the movie Wargames.
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On regular TV or do you need a smellavision set-top box?
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Re: Pong (Score:2)
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You mean this one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
at least it has a character (Score:2)
nuts to that - give us a leisure suit larry movie.
Prediction (Score:1)
It will be complete and utter garbage with next to nothing to do with the actual game. Receiving less than 10% on metacritic overall.
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I hear they have lined up Adam Sandler to play the lead wooden block. Perfect casting, but they might need more than $80m to break even now.
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That's nothing; I hear it is going to be Uwe Boll's triumphant return to feature film directing. That's right, he's decided to retire from boxing, which it turns out he was much better at [youtube.com].
Re: Prediction (Score:1)
Wrong. They blocked in Keanu Reeves for the lead role citing several stunning performances which prove he is perfect for the roll
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It will be like so many of these types of film, a bunch of morons will pay money so they can get a producer credit, and then try to sue the real producers when that's about the only ROI they get for their money.
"Free software should have never existed" (Score:2)
But how would a biopic spin Mr. Pajitnov's claim that free software destroys the market [slashdot.org]?
Well, it could've been worse (Score:5, Funny)
The announcement could've been for a second M. Night Shyamalan "Avatar: The Last Airbender" movie.
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As much as the first (only) movie sucked, personally I think it being an aborted part-1-of-3 only makes it suck more.
Already been done (Score:2)
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You do know Lethal Weapon is set to be a TV show next year.?.
I guess remaking rush hour worked so well we're now going to get all the cop pair films done. When they do a starsky and hutch based on the film based on the series we know we've come full circle.
Hire Some Homeless (Score:1)
What the HECK... (Score:1)
Ferret
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I guess it will be the 60 second scene from the Pixels movie stretched to 90 minutes.
Media mogul Bruno Wu (Score:1)
we need a movie for taipan, the old trs-80 (maybe others) game.
print "elder brother wu has sent "; rnd(0)*382; " braves to meet you, taipan!"
ok, well.... maybe we don't need a movie for that. forget I even mentioned it.
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That could be spun out decently...
A pauper unexpectedly and unknowingly does a favor for a wealthy underworld boss, and is rewarded with his choice of arms or cash. He chooses wisely, and uses his gift to start a small trading business around south Asia. It goes well until he meets some pirates, but he barely manages to escape, and is forced to borrow money to make repairs. From then on, the pirates harass him at nearly every passage, and he must keep increasing his volume and taking riskier cargo just to s
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In a world... of only letters and numbers... a small group of kids... made their names famous... TO THE ENTIRE MALL!
Get ready for... 20 GOTO 10 the Movie!
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Taipan! the game was already an adaptation based on a novel, though
Obligatory 13 year-old Penny-Arcade comic (Score:5, Funny)
Here's the obligatory 13 year-old Penny-Arcade comic about this topic:
https://www.penny-arcade.com/c... [penny-arcade.com]
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Nope.. It'll be a bunch of rap with occasional cues from the game's music.
I hate to say it... (Score:4, Informative)
Spoilers (Score:2)
Okay so you picked the wrong location for the movie and you just ruined what is probably the major "surprise" of the movie.
Got any more spoilers for us?
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with a plot that's "not at all what you think
Well, since it's a game that was entirely about placing falling blocks you would be right about that as I can't think of a plot to build a 90 minute movie around. At least nothing that wouldn't be played to the people confined in Guantanamo.
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How is Uwe Boll not attached to this? (Score:5, Funny)
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Don't worry, he's the 1x4 piece that doesn't show up until right after you needed it.
Bag randomizer and hold piece (Score:2)
Then you didn't plan.
Tetris games since 2001 use the "bag" randomizer [harddrop.com], which deals out one shuffling of all 7 pieces, then another shuffling of all seven pieces, etc. Thus the maximum gap between two "I" Tetriminos is 12, if one bag begins with an I and the next bag ends with an I. In addition, Tetris games since 2001 have the "hold piece" feature [harddrop.com], letting the player save an I and use it later.
In 2007, colour_thief and I proved that the bag randomizer and hold piece make it possible to play forever [harddrop.com]. Then in
Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
For a long time, I've thought that the movie industry was scraping the bottom of the barrel. Endless sequels and unheard-of shite.
Now it seems we've moved to making movies of anything that anyone has ever heard of, no matter how related to an actual movie they could actually be.
And I haven't bought a cinema ticket in years, purchased a DVD in years (except second-hand), bought a Blu-Ray at all, and if it isn't on Amazon Prime or Google Play Movies, pretty much I can't be bothered with it and the things I've bought on there are with promotional credit, huge discounts, and movies that I know I already love.
Honestly, there's times when you just look at things and think "Where the fuck did all that good stuff I enjoyed go to?".
Apart from The Imitation Game (story of my hero), The Martian (that was a big mistake), I can't think of anything I've bought since... years ago. And with shite like this getting the money, it's hardly a surprise.
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And the worst part is that enough people will go see so that it will make enough money to enable the trilogy.
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Planned movie series get canned all the time when the early installments flop. Unless this movie has a lot more attraction than most of us are guessing it will, it will almost certainly flop, and it's unlikely that they'll be able to come up with another $80 million to try again.
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Informative)
I think we'll be getting the movie "Ass" a lot sooner than we thought.
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I got 50 bucks on Fox.
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How about, "Where are my pants?"
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Not really. Hollywood/the entertainment industry has always produced on a bell curve, you've just edited the crap out of your memory and thus created a false vision of a rosy past that never actually existed.
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Most overrated film of all time? No accounting for taste when a film-noir masterpiece like The Last Seduction is rated only the 92nd best movie of the same year.
Re: Sigh (Score:2)
You think even the Martian was bad? You must have very exacting tastes. So which year in your past produced more than 2 movies that you did enjoy?
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For a long time, I've thought that the movie industry was scraping the bottom of the barrel. Endless sequels and unheard-of shite.
That could describe the movie industry ever since the beginning of the movie industry. You're looking at the past with rose colored glasses. Remember, the term "B Movie" was coined in the 1930's! And you're forgetting studios like AI pictures and Troma. There have always been crappy movies.
What enables us to look at the past with rose colored glasses is how much of the old stuff that doesn't get shown on TV or put on disc. There's a metric fuckton of B-Movie westerns that will never be on video, so all
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Oh quit your belly aching. You said yourself you haven't spent any of your own money on it so whats the big deal if other people do? I get that maybe you end up seeing a bunch of annoying ads but all this complaining is only hurting you.
"Where the fuck did all that good stuff I enjoyed go to?"
TV! Apparently there are something like 400 scripted stories currently in production in the "TV" format (I'm including all the Netflix/hulus/etc here). Its the most in history and yes many are derivative lowest common denominator types but there is indeed room for your niche
Dark Pixel did it first (Score:2)
The Dark Pixel Youtube channel put out a trailer for their vision of a Tetris live action movie, it's worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Sometimes it works. (Score:2)
The movie based on Battleship was... acceptable. So sometimes a movie taking inspiration from a simple game can work.
The strangest thing about that movie is that Michael Bay had nothing to do with it, yet it copies his style so exactly people tend to assume it was one of his.
It could be worse (Score:2)
It's just a matter of time...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7ZGsD3REhQ [youtube.com]
Tetris as a movie... (Score:3)
Live-Action Tetris Movie
Yeah. I'm sure the plot for that won't be contrived as hell.
In case someone hasn't already beat me to it... (Score:2)
I am the man, (Score:2)
Who arranges the blocks that fall from up above.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Just hire these guys..
Battleship (Score:1)
All-in-all, Battleship wasn't that bad a movie. I have *no* idea why they decided to tie it to the game of the same name, but realistically for a sea-combat-with-aliens type movie it was better than expected, certainly better than Pixels (but then again, that's pretty par for a Sandler flick these days).
As silly as it is, I'd rather see them release a movie based on a fairly simplistic game concept than butcher the plot of a more in-depth game (e.g. Doom). I enjoyed "Wreck it Ralph" which was cute - ok, a l
Missing the point (Score:2)
3 movies?
It's Tetris, should be 4 movies!
But... (Score:2)
April fools was over 1 1/2 months ago...
A TETRIS movie?
There were no characters or story to that game...
WTF is wrong with people....
And Slashdot is used to Betas (Score:2)
"We're not giving feet to the geometric shapes... What you [will] see in Tetris is the teeny tip of an iceberg that has intergalactic significance."
"Greetings, Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan armada."
Possible plot (Score:2)
What you [will] see in Tetris is the teeny tip of an iceberg that has intergalactic significance."
The game is actually a portal that is activated when blocks are placed in a specific complex configuration over, like, 1,000 levels. The world grandmaster Tetris champion unintentionally opens the portal during a competition and our lives are forever transformed.
Or something like that.
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When you put people in groups, the ones that don't fit the group exactly will surprise you in possibly quite terrifying ways.
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Like taking over a wildlife reserve warden's station ?
Scary, but mitigated by the fact that although they may remember to bring guns they apparently aren't smart enough to pack things like food and blankets...
Re:This is sad (Score:5, Funny)
Only a Republican would enjoy watching someone else play Tetris.
That's because they like things that trickle down.
Re:This is sad (Score:4, Funny)
>That's because they like things that trickle down.
It's sort of the perfect metaphor, because from one angle you watch it trickling down and from the other end you watch it disapear.
Re:This is sad (Score:4, Interesting)
Then would this video of fast play leading up to Invisible Tetris [youtu.be] and this video of Shirase mode in TGM3 [youtube.com] make you a card-carrying member of the GOP?
(Hint: The bleeps when each piece spawns signal what the next piece will be.)
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And for those of us without a connection fast enough to play a YouTube video? Like in the Seattle area...
This is like the third thread I've seen today with people moaning about Seattle internet. Sounds like it really sucks but do you all have an agreement to to all the complaining ion one day or something?
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If it is so bad, why do you choose to live there?
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If you want some Rush Limbaugh to listen to on your portable music player, Amazon Music is selling the only good part of a Limbaugh show [amazon.com] for $1.29.
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Tetris? Even Doom (whose storyline seems more like a justification for the art direction) got a movie? Think about Halo, Half Life, Borderlands/2, Portal 2, maybe even Prey, for example, who have a fair amount of potential in their storylines to make a movie that didn't suck. Not that they are immune to bad direction, but you know damn well there are some _rich_ universes/stories out there that could be outstanding in a film.
edit - captcha: arguable
I didn't realize Tetris was the only video game that wasn't an FPS.