Let’s go back to before video gaming was a multi million-dollar industry, to its humble beginnings circa 1978: I’m talking Space Invaders. By the eighties, its impact upon popular culture revolutionised video gaming, taking it mainstream and ensuing in a global phenomenon. Now the producers of Transformers and Drive, Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Gigi Pritzker respectively, have bought the rights and are working towards developing Space Invaders THE MOVIE.
di Bonaventura is no stranger to eighties modern take-offs, evidenced in the Transformers and G.I. Joe movies. He’s also developing Asteroids, based on the arcade game and a remake of Pet Sematary (1989). While Pritzker’s Off Lot company is behind the highly anticipated thriller Drive, starring Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan and Bryan Cranston, based on the eponymous 2005 book and is also a producer on Ender’s Game, an adaptation of the sci-fi novel by Orson Scott Card.
The challenge will now lie in a convincing and original story line, setting and script that can be derived from the game that goes beyond the premise of killing and defeating swarms of aliens with a laser canon. It’s certainly an ambitious project, but leaves plenty of room for creative licence. Gamers are just hoping it doesn’t blow the legacy of Space Invaders up in pieces.
