The Asteroids movie that has been in the works for several years now, jumping from writer to writer, but firmly under the production of Transformers producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, appears to have a basic description now. Hollywood was able to inject something beyond exploding asteroids into the Atari game that revolves around the simple objective of shooting asteroids, even when di Bonaventura himself admitted that plot-wise, “there’s nothing to the game.” What’s more, the film may not be the massive piece of destruction that was expected.
Given di Bonaventura’s work on films like Transformers and G.I. Joe, it seemed likely that the movie would be focused on disaster or action, with some plot built around a preexisting product. According to di Bonaventura in a recent interview about RED 2, however,
“It’s not a disaster movie, yeah, if we’re successful at getting it made. It’s much more of a space opera. It’s like a great sci-fi movie if we get it done right. It is not at all what people think it is. People think, ‘Oh, the asteroid’s gonna hit the earth,’ and I have no interest in doing that. That’s been done exceedingly well before. No, this takes place in an asteroid belt, the whole movie.”
It seems very likely there will still be action, given that di Bonaventura is producing and that writers including Man of Steel’s David S. Goyer have worked on the film. All that this really confirms is that Asteroids will not be a disaster movie, but the confusing list of involved writers, including Harold Pinter protégé Jez Butterworth, maintains the air of mystery cultivated by the fact that the original game, while enjoyable, featured a white triangle as its protagonist. Still, back in 2009 the film was said to be about “two brothers…who have to go through a seminal experience to figure out their relationship, against this huge backdrop,” and was reported to involve aliens. If this description is up to date, we do have some idea of the story behind the film. Di Bonaventura’s perspective on the name of the film supports the theory that, if nothing else, it will be dramatic,
“It just seems like that’s big. Like, what? Asteroids? That’s big. What’s going on up there? When I look at that project, that’s what I think about it, is I think about the scale of it and I think about the possibility of it.”
Of course, all the speculation amounts to little without confirmation that the movie will actually be made, which remains to be seen given the amount of time it has spent in script purgatory. Below you can see Screen Rant’s Perri Nemiroff question di Bonaventura about Asteroids, and about his other work in progress, Space Invaders.
(via Screen Rant)
- Asteroids Movie Gets a New Writer
- Congress and the Astroid Apocalypse
- Astroids Pass Between Earth and the Moon
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