Universal wins rights to make movie from… ASTEROIDS?!

Coming to a theater near you someday…  A movie 32 years in the making, 1979’s arcade smash hit, Asteroids.  I can’t believe I just wrote that sentence, but it’s true.

According to Hollywood Reporter, Universal has won a four-studio bidding war to pick up the film rights to the classic Atari video game “Asteroids.” Matthew Lopez will write the script for the feature adaptation, which will be produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura.

Asteroids, initially released as an arcade game in 1979, players control a triangular space ship in an asteroid field of big, medium, and small shapes. The object was to shoot and destroy the hulking masses of rock and the occasional flying saucer while avoiding smashing into anything.

That’s it.

There were no storylines or cutscenes back then, just you, some dots on a screen, and a high score board you tried every week to get to the top of.  As a result, the studio will be creating a plot from scratch.

Amazingly enough, however, it seems that Universal is getting quite used to that process, as it’s in the middle of doing just that for… Now get this… Hasbro board games, the first two coming up will be “Battleship” and “Candyland.”

Di Bonaventura’s next outing is “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra,” which Paramount is set to open Aug. 7.   Lopez came out of Disney’s writing program and worked on that studio’s recent movies “Bedtime Stories” and “Race to Witch Mountain.”

Clearly, Hollywood has run out of ideas.