Asteroids the movie?
Pete Ashdown
'Asteroids' lands at Universal
Lorenzo di Bonaventura producing game adaptation
By Borys Kit
July 2, 2009, 02:12 AM ET
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.
In "Asteroids," initially released as an arcade game in 1979, 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. Universal,
however, is used to that development process, as it's 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."
Senior vp of production Jeff Kirschenbaum will oversee the project for
Universal.
Di Bonaventura's next outing is "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra," which Paramount
is set to open Aug. 7.
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.
Lopez and Atari are repped by ICM.
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