Sony is developing a movie based on Blake Harris’ upcoming book, Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, And The Battle That Defined A Generation, with longtime collaborators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg attached to write and direct. The book will chronicle Sega’s rise to success in the early 1990s with its Genesis console and Nintendo’s effort to reclaim the dominance it enjoyed in the ’80s with the NES. The Sega-Nintendo showdown is historic because it divided fans into two loyal and belligerent camps; their raging debates over the relative superiority of the Genesis and the Super NES marked the last time that video game enthusiasts argued pointlessly over two inanimate devices that both do pretty much the same thing. With the spread of the Internet, the wide accessibility of information elevated video game debates to a level of breathtaking enlightenment and rich intellectual depth, making so-called “console wars” a quaint artifact of the past.
Rogen and Goldberg are also contributing the foreword for the book, so they’ve apparently had their eyes on this project for a while. But Hollywood’s love affairs with the video game world are often intense and fleeting. For instance, the film rights for Ernest Cline’s 2011 retro-future gaming novel, Ready Player One, were also sold before its release (to Warner Bros.)—with multiple studios competing for the book, no less. But while Ready Player One sold well, the film project remains stuck in development limbo. Those who want to relive the thrill of “blast processing” on the big screen will have to hope that Rogen and Golberg have enough clout to save Console Wars from the same purgatory. [via ComingSoon.net]