Warner Bros. hopes to join Universal—which has begun work on a Missile Command film—and Fox—which is developing an Asteroids movie—in exploiting nostalgia for the quarters-and-joysticks era of simple graphics and simpler stories in video games, the LA Times reports, by seeking the rights from Japanese creators Taito to launch a Space Invaders film franchise (not to be confused with this). Warner Bros. already owns the game’s U.S. rights through last year’s purchase of Midway Games.
According to the Times, Warner Bros. intends to attach Mark Gordon, Jason Blum, and Guymon Casady to the project as producers. Gordon has worked in both television and film, producing work from the moderately respectable (Reaper, Saving Private Ryan) to the truly objectionable (Private Practice, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, 10,000 B.C., The Day After Tomorrow). Blum has experienced recent success with Paranormal Activity and The Reader but also had a hand in this winter’s Dwayne Johnson vehicle The Tooth Fairy. The complete lack of backstory in Space Invaders ensures that we have no idea what a film based on the game will look like, though it seems unlikely that Warner Bros. will bankroll a movie in which a two-dimensional tank blasts away at an implacable zombie-like horde of descending aliens for 90 minutes.