Atari's MISSILE COMMAND Film Adaptation Set up at FOX

Atari has has brought it's classic 1980's arcade game Missile Command to 20th Century Fox to be adapted into a feature film. The film will be written by Burk Sharpless and Matt Sazama who recently wrote the Flash Gordon reboot and co-wrote Dracula Year Zero.

According to variety, "the scribes have little to adapt beyond a title to build a plot around and a Cold War-heavy scenario of players having to defend their cities from being destroyed by a rain of missiles."

In the game, the player's six cities are being attacked by an endless hail of ballistic missiles, some of them even splitting like multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs), and in later levels smart bombs which can evade a less than perfectly targeted missile. As a regional commander of three anti-missile batteries, the player must defend six cities in their zone from being destroyed.

I can see something like this being a fun movie. This is the third Atari film that's been set up for a film adaptation. Atari has set up Asteroids at Universal Pictures and Rollercoaster Tycoon was set up at Sony Pictures.

I haven't played this game in over 20 years, but I remember having a blast playing it. Here's a little video that walks you through the game. Could you imagine if they used these same visual effects in the movie. Ha! That would be awesome.