By Adnan Tezer Jul 2, 2009, 21:07 GMT
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.
In "Asteroids," initially released as an arcade game in 1979, a player controlled a triangular space ship in an asteroid field. The object was to shoot and destroy the hulking masses of rock and the occasional flying saucer while avoiding smashing into both.
As opposed to today's video games, there is no story line, so the studio would be creating a plot from scratch. Universal is currently doing just that for several of the Hasbro board game properties it is translating to the big screen, such as "Battleship" and "Candyland."
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lopez came out of Disney's writing program and worked on that studio's recent movies "Bedtime Stories" and "Race to Witch Mountain."
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