SCI FI PI

If you've become disenchanted with Hollywood's remake factory seemingly spinning into overdrive, fear not, the 'extremely dodgy and hasn't worked yet method' of converting computer games to films is being given another shot.

Ho hum you say. Ho hum indeed. But that's when you read that the game being converted is Atari's Asteroids, one of the original arcade bashers that people who are forty played with as a kid. The rumour mill has been going wild as to the whos, hows and whys, but Variety has just reported that Universal has managed to snare the rights to the feature version of the game after a frantic bidding war (a bidding war, yes, over a thirty year old computer game). Fox and Sony lost out.

Universal has set up the project with producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura.

If you were wondering what that means for the Asteroids movie - di Bonaventura's producing credits include GI Joe:Rise of Cobra, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, 1408, Transformers, Doom and Constantine. So no newbie in the field of big budget blockbusters - or less than cerebral fare.

Matt Lopez, whose credits include 'Race to Witch Mountain' and 'Bedtime Stories' will write the script.

However, what seems to be one more sign of the coming apocalypse (will we see Hollywood's spiralling insanity in Roland Emmerich's 2012?) at first glance, actually may be the basis of a great movie. Destroying asteroids in a little ship - on the big screen, with big special effects? Must be some special kind of plot to explain that! The only really insane thing, when you think about it, is that Hollywood elects to pay money for a story that involves blowing up rocks in space.

Maybe they want to do the whole thing in ray-trace graphics. Maybe that's the catch...

In other news, Warner Bros. is now the owner of Midway Games and its 'Mortal Kombat' franchise after the company went into bankruptcy. Sad news (for both the company and film lovers. With more Mortal Kombat films more than likely on the way, one wonders what other Midway titles will be gracing the silver screen.

Galaga, Defender, Pac-Man (!), Galaxian, or even Quake?

Stay tuned. Also, if you're a screenwriter with an original Sci Fi idea, please please please send it to Hollywood. They need all the help they can get.