Coming soon, to a theater near you!

DISCLAIMER:

Before we get started, I have to state for the record that the following article is NOT a Fiction Friday piece.  This is factual.  I don’t even have the kind of time or inclination to make this kind of story up, because it takes the laws of all things rational and puts them squarely on their collective heads

Ready?  See if you can follow me on this.  Let me break it down by numbers, because again, it’s so insane, it defies all logic.

1) Universal Studios…

2) …won a four-studio bidding war…

3) … to pick up the film rights to the classic Atari video game “Asteroids.”

Hyperjump with me to help me understand this.

Okay, one more time.

1) Universal Studios…

2) …won a four-studio bidding war…

3) … to pick up the film rights to the classic Atari video game “Asteroids.”

1)      Universal Studios…

A legitimate film company with such recent serious films as “Charlie Wilson’s War” and “Frost/Nixon”.  This ain’t Uwe Boll going for Postal 2.

2)      …won a four-studio bidding war…

Not only was Universal Studios duped into getting excited about this project, but there were three other film studios with the kind of financial backing to actually be able to compete in a bidding war.  Over a black and white video game from 1979 based around a triangle and a bunch of obtuse shapes.

3)      … to pick up the film rights to the classic Atari video game “Asteroids.”

Are we serious?  Are there any franchises from that era that have less of a story than Asteroids?  Pong?  I mean, hell, if this isn’t some kind of April Fool’s Joke or what, I don’t know what else to say.  I mean, why even bother buying the franchise rights for a movie?  What are you purchasing?  The triangle shaped ship’s deep engaging story of mining rocks in deep space?

I’m one of those folks who back in the 1990s when the first of the “Mission Impossible” movies came out, back when Tom Cruise was an actor, I was all excited to see them revamp such a great series.  Then they started on their “Charlie’s Angels”, whose script even pokes fun of its own concept of all the big name television shows from the 70s being remade into full length feature films.

Smash cut to this announcement, and here we are.  This is our first step on the long path towards Mike Judge’s future society from the movie “Idiocracy”.  This is where we’ve gone to as a society.  Congratulations.

Universal is also optioning such timeless classics as the Hasbro games titles “Candyland” and “Battleship”, but at least a team of monkey in a room full of typewriters could come up with a story based on those games.  “Candyland” has places like the Gumdrop Fairy F*cking Lake and the Anal Rape Chocolate Sugar Slide (or something like that, I can’t remember the game that well), but there are fantastical locations that someone with half a brain can actually run with and come up with a movie.

This must be some kind of “Trading Spaces” style bet between Unversial Studio bigwigs.  I can see it now, Tweedledee Big Boss runs into Tweedledumb Movie Executive Producer, and for the wager of one dollar, they bet that Americans will go see anything put in front of them with enough tits and explosions.  So they get the guy who’s doing the Transformers’ sequel and the new GI Joe movie (don’t even get me started on what an abortion I’m sure that’s going to be), and the bet is on.  $210 million dollar opening weekend?  You betcha.

So three summers from now, “Asteroids” will be released as a summer blockbuster with Christian Bale as the lone asteroid miner, where Earth has been ravaged by environmental disasters, and Megan Fox is his stunningly hot co-pilot, blah, blah, blah.

Why in the name of our lord Cthulu would you waste the dollars to option a game for a movie, where the end product will obviously be so far removed from the actual arcade cabinet, that the only thing that will remain the same would be the name “Asteroids”?

Can you possibly think of any more ridiculous a franchise to actually produce?  I mean, where do you go from here?  Old 70s commercials?  Dental floss?

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