After Universal won a bidding war last year over the movie rights to Asteroids, Atari now hopes to launch a movie based on the classic arcade game Missile Command.
The Los Angeles Times reported Thursday that the venerable game company has been actively pitching studios on the Missile Command concept. There's a good chance, says the Times, that the project will wind up at Fox through former Newscorp CEO Peter Chernin's production company.
Missile Command, developed by Tempest creator Dave Theurer, first hit arcades in 1980. Players used a trackball to launch defensive weapons, protecting their cities from incoming missile attacks. As the Times points out, the game leveraged the Cold War anxieties of the 80's. It was perhaps best known for its iconic and inevitable "The End" screen, a chilling scene of nuclear winter. Versions of the game were later released on platforms from Atari's classic home consoles to recent retro updates for the iPhone and Xbox 360 (above).
The notion of movies based on retro games like Pong or Asteroids is usually reserved for punchlines. (On that note, Kohler is still available for scriptwriting duties.)
But it makes sense. Hollywood has become increasingly risk-averse when it comes to launching new properties, with good reason: Only two of the top 30 films in the last decade, Kung Fu Panda and Finding Nemo, were fresh concepts. The rest were sequels, adaptations or remakes.
So if you want to get a movie made and convince audiences to buy tickets made you'd better have something, anything, to tie it to. That's why director Peter Berg was able to get his high-concept movie that pits naval warships against an alien invasion off the ground – because the picture is based on the board game Battleship.
Here's where old-school videogames come in. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of retro properties up for grabs. They run the gamut when it comes to subject matter. Most importantly, compared to today's games, classic games like Missile Command aren't saddled with backstories. Retro games give movie makers the blank slate of an established old-school game as a launching point for a creative commercial endeavor.
Who wants to bet that we see an Adventure movie in the next ten years? Who will play the square?
Atari's Missile Command, a potential Hollywood franchise [LA Times]
Image courtesy Atari
See Also:
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- Videogames Make Better Horror Than Hollywood
- Microsoft at CES: Natal, Classic Arcade Games
- Atari's Site Refresh Features Playable Classic Arcade Games
