Warner Bros.' Space Invaders movie writer says the adaptation will not be a classic alien invasion story. One of the first true video game classics, Space Invaders arrived in arcades around the world in 1978. The simple yet addictive game then became a must-have cartridge for the Atari 2600 home system.
Like most classic ‘80s video games Space Invaders has naturally gone through multiple iterations over the years, popping up on various consoles and in recent times making its way to mobile gaming. The game has also shown up in movies, most memorably Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Adam Sandler’s Pixels. An actual movie adaptation of Space Invaders didn’t become a possibility until 2011 when Transformers producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura began development on a film. In 2015, Dan Kunka signed on for the task of writing a script based on the very simplistic fixed shooter game. The most recent update on the long-gestating project revealed writing duties had been handed off to Greg Russo with Akiva Goldsman producing for Warner Bros..
Speaking to We Got This Covered to promote the upcoming Mortal Kombat movie, Russo gave an update on Space Invaders and confirmed it’s indeed still alive. Russo then dropped a hint about what he wants to do with his adaptation and indicated he isn’t planning on writing the standard Roland Emmerich-style invasion movie:
Space Invaders is over at Warner Bros., and it’s at New Line, too, the same kind of crew that put together Mortal Kombat, and that’s one I’m really excited about. That’s a movie when I approached it I was like, ‘I don’t want to do Independence Day.’ That was basically, I think that was the one thing I said, ‘I don’t want to do the invasion movie I’ve seen 100 times.’ And so for me, it was about finding a new way into that title, which I think is going to really blow people away expectations-wise and they’re going to see something that hopefully they weren’t expecting, so I’m excited for it.
Tackling another iconic video game franchise should be no problem for Russo after he wrote the script for the highly-anticipated Mortal Kombat movie about to hit theaters. As an extra advantage for Russo and company in developing Space Invaders, it’s actually hard to imagine what such a movie should look and feel like. The game is indeed so basic that a writer could go almost anywhere. Judging by his new comments, it seems Russo is uninterested in the classic premise where a group of aliens shows up on earth and must be fought off by humans (which more-or-less is what the game offers).
But if Russo isn’t going to deliver an Independence Day-style alien invasion movie, what exactly is he looking to create with Space Invaders? A direct tie-in with the video game is one possibility, perhaps something in the style of The Last Starfighter where a Space Invaders player ends up battling aliens. Whatever Russo ends up doing with the movie, it’s a fair bet there won’t be a place for a Will Smith-style gung-ho hero punching extra-terrestrials in the face. That being said, Independence Day isn’t after all such a bad model for an alien invasion movie as the film did huge box office business and helped to define the genre. But Russo should nonetheless be applauded for at least trying to dream up something new and unexpected as he tackles adapting Space Invaders.
Source: We Got This Covered