I imagine there's a development exec somewhere on Universal's staff who periodically returns to his former game room at his parent's house, rifling through old Twister games and Uno decks to figure out exactly how to make the next #1 hit movie. The studio has already partnered with Hasbro to adapt all kinds of board games that were never intended to be movies-- Battleship and Candyland, anyone?-- and now Universal has set their sights on, of all things, Atari.
Specifically they're targeting Asteroids, the super-basic arcade game in which you shoot lasers and flying saucers, for no reason other than that they're flying at your. As THR notes, the game has no plot, which means they'll be making up everything out of whole cloth. Matthew Lopez, who recently worked on Bedtime Stories and Race to Witch Mountain for Disney, will be writing the script, which I guess means they're making Asteroids into something family friendly. I mean, it's not like they have a plot they have to honor; they could make this movie Star Wars 7 and still claim to be within their rights.
Again, it's hard to get too up in arms about a meaningless adaptation of a meaningless video game, except to wonder why they can't just make their own space movie and call it whatever the hell they want. But in this day of adapting any property you can get your hands on, I suppose that's no longer the point.
