One of the most famous video games of all time has had a movie adaptation stuck in development hell for several years, but it might have just escaped.
Deadline reports that Ben Zazove and Evan Turner have been commissioned to write the screenplay for an upcoming adaptation of Space Invaders, a classic Taito arcade game from 1978. Zazove and Turner most recently penned The Out-Laws, an action comedy for Netflix. There’s no word on what exactly the Space Invaders movie will look like, who will direct it, who will be in it, or when it will come out yet, of course.
This movie was actually announced more than six years ago with screenwriter Greg Russo (who did the recent Mortal Kombat reboot) attached. That apparently didn’t work out, so now we’re here with two different screenwriters on the same project, six years later.
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Space Invaders, if you aren’t aware, doesn’t have a lot going on, plot-wise. You play as a little ship shooting alien spacecraft as they encroach upon Earth. The original arcade game doesn’t really have much in the way of lore or emotional resonance in its narrative, so Zazove and Turner have some work to do to make it work as a movie.
That is, of course, assuming the movie ever actually gets made. Plenty of video game movies are announced, but comparatively few actually come out. I’m old enough to remember when Asteroids was getting a movie adaptation 15 years ago.