Retro Arcade Shooter Asteroid as a Motion Picture? You Bet!

Retro is "In", and Hollywood knows it! As those of us who grew up in the '70s and '80s are now all grown up and having rug rats of our own, we long for all that pop culture entertainment from our past. While we are still coming to terms with the movies, TV shows and video game we grew up with now being considered "classics" (I ask you, when did WKRP in Cincinnati become an old show?!), for the most part kids today have no idea what they're missing. This is one of the big reasons flicks like Transformers, Alvin & The Chipmunks and TMNT are such big hits. They are one of the few opportunities to share a piece of our youth with our kids.

Now that big-budget film adoptions of cartoons, toys and comic books from the '60s, '70s and '80s have all had huge success, it looks like it's time for classic arcade games to get their shot, as Universal Pictures has just inked a deal with Atari to bring their historic '70s video arcade hit Asteroids to the big screen.

Released to video arcades in 1979, Asteroids quickly became one of the most popular games of all time. Presented in vector graphics, players control a triangular ship that rotates and flies around an asteroid field, shooting the big rocks apart and destroying the small ones, all while trying to avoid not getting hit or shot down by enemy flying saucers.

While making a big movie out of this early historic game might sound a bit odd at first, it's not such a bad idea. As the original game didn't have a storyline, with the exception of a ship, outer space and floating rocks most everything else is fair game for writer Matthew Lopez (Escpae to Witch Mountain, Bedtime Stories) and Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra), who've already been taped for the project.

Besides, who doesn't like movies about asteroids? Remember Meteor and Armageddon? I'm just trying to figure out how they're going to get the flying saucer in there.