China to Make 'Tetris The Movie' Trilogy

If you thought making a movie after the boardgame Battleship was scraping the bottom of the barrel, now Chinese media entrepreneur Bruno Wu, has announced that production for Tetris The Movie will begin in 2017. 

Wu joins make Mortal Kombat producer Larry Kasanoff on the project which is being billed as a live-action sci-fi thriller. Not only will it film in China, it’s also set to have an all-Chinese cast.

Tetris by the way, is called ‘the Russian Box’（俄罗斯方块) in Chinese. The game was made by Russian game designer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984. It will be interesting to see what the film will be called in Chinese when it comes out.

The budget will be in the USD 80 million range. How the filmmakers manage to turn the the quarter century old video game about falling geometric shapes into a dark sci-fi thriller is anybody’s guess. Either way, it'll be hard-pressed to do worse than Adam Sandler's mega-flop videogame-related Pixels from last year.

“It’s not at all what you think,” Kassanoff told Deadline Hollywood, “It will be a cool surprise.”

Perhaps the most startling detail is that the film is being conceived as just part one of a trilogy.

The announcement comes as another game turned animation film, The Angry Birds Movie is set to hit Chinese cinema screens this Friday May 20. Fittingly, the premiere for that film will take place at the “Bird’s Nest” Beijing National Stadium.

After that, Universal’s movie version of the World Of Warcraft game hits China June 8. The massively multiplayer online role playing game from Blizzard that has been a hit on China’s Netease portal since 2009.

Starring Chinese-American actor Daniel Wu and directed by Duncan Jones, son of recently deceased rock’n’roll legend David Bowie, Warcraft the film follows warriors from different species fighting off invaders to protect their home. It will be released in 2D, 3D, 3D IMAX, and the China Film Giant Screen formats.

Image: gamerssphere.com