Atari Bringing Arcade Game Missile Command to the Big Screen

Atari Bringing Arcade Game Missile Command to the Big Screen

Following the upcoming Battleship and Asteroids adaptations, Atari has hired writers Burk Sharpless and Matt Sazama to adapt the classic 80s arcade game Missile Command into a feature film. Producer Peter Chernin (Rise of the Apes) is developing the project at his own production company, with Atari exec producing. Sharpless & Sazama recently wrote the Flash Gordon reboot and worked on Dracula Year Zero. Missile Command, which hit in 1980, is one of the simplest games involving firing counter-missiles from the ground to destroy incoming missile attacks from the air. How that will be made into a movie, I have no idea?

There couldn't be a more perfect time to reference a recent James Cameron quote that's spreading around the web. Via Screen Rant: "We have a story crisis they want to make the Battleship game into a film. This is pure desperation." Exactly! And yet here we are, reporting even more depressing news that a classic 8-bit game that involves defending our country by shooting missiles with a trackball is the latest basis behind a big budget action movie that's now in the works. This better be like Red Dawn or else I don't know what the heck to expect. I don't even know if they'll set it in the Cold War or update it to be contemporary, but either way this definitely seems like a desperate attempt to capitalize on a brand that, well, hasn't been around for the last 20 years. Does anyone think a Missile Command movie might actually turn out okay?