Brett Ratner Producing TETRIS Origins Movie
X-Men 3 director Brett Ratner is currently in the process of developing a film based around the video game Tetris. It will be a biopic type film based on the life of Russian video game designer and computer engineer Alexey Pajitnov, who created the iconic game.
The film is being produced by Ratner and James Packer of RatPac Entertainment. The news comes from The Tracking Board, and this is what they had to say about the story. I had no idea that there was such a heavy, dramatic story behind its creation:
"In the vein of The Social Network, the story details the career of Pajitnov, who first developed Tetris with the help of Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim Gerasimov in 1984 in the communist-run USSR. Pajitnov was working for a Soviet-funded research and development center in Moscow when he developed the first version of the puzzle game, which began to spread throughout the region–initially exchanged between computer programmers.
"As Tetris grew in popularity, being upgraded and adapted for various gaming devices and systems, the rights to the game became the crux of multiple complicated legal battles that spanned across the globe. The battles became so heated, in fact, that they threatened to destabilize relationships between governments. Following a controversial court ruling, Nintendo gained the legal right to sell the game, and as a result, Tetris was sold with every Game Boy console in America. Pajitnov, who moved to America in 1991, did not see a dime for his creation until 1996.
"That same year, GameSpot named Pajitnov the fourth most influential computer game developer of all time, while IGN later cited him as “the ultimate video game one-hit wonder.” He went on to develop games for Microsoft."
This sounds like it will be a fascinating film, and as long as Ratner doesn't direct it, it should be decent. However, if you don't want to wait for this movie to learn the behind-the-scene tale of Tetris' creation, you can watch a BBC documentary called Tetris: From Russia With Love. I've included the embed for that doc below.
I remember when I got my first Gameboy for Christmas one year, and like many other people around the world, I played Tetris for hours on end. It's an incredibly addictive game! Just for the hell of it, I also included a clip from the documentary The Ecstasy Of Order: The Tetris Masters, which centers on people who have mastered Tetris. It's unbelievably insane to see what these players are capable of!