The Tetris Movie Is Not At All For Kids
There has been no shortage of video games adapted into full-fledged feature films on the big screen, most notably the recent addition of Uncharted which starred Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg. But there are some games that have yet to be made into interesting and thought-provoking works of cinematic art, like the classic game of Tetris that occupied much time during people’s childhoods. However, a new Tetris movie is releasing next year, and according to MovieWeb, the flick will be rated R due to the nature of it being a biographical drama.
Even though movies based on video games lately have gone in the direction of appealing to families, much like Sonic the Hedgehog and its sequel have done, the Tetris movie is choosing to try a different angle. Rather than focus on the details of childhood nostalgia within the game, the movie will be a biographical film detailing the battle of the game’s inventor to secure the intellectual property rights to the game itself. The movie will be rated R because of language uttered at points throughout the story, enough so that the Motion Picture Association believes it is too strong to receive a PG-13 rating.
Tetris is set to be released on Apple TV+ in March 2023, and the movie will star Taron Egerton as Henk Rogers, the Dutch video game designer who tried to acquire the rights to distribute Tetris in the 1980s and 1990s. The initial game was developed by Alexey Pajitnov while the Russian-born American was working for the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre, and the real-life figure will be portrayed by Russian actor Nikita Yefremov in the Tetris movie. Rounding out the ensemble cast is English actor Toby Jones, Roger Allam, Anthony Boyle, Togo Igawa, Ken Yamamura, and Matthew Marsh.
The game of Tetris became a popular pop culture phenomenon for many children living in the 1980s and 1990s, so a movie about it will be interesting, as Nintendo introduced the game worldwide in the mid-1990s when the rights to the game became a point of contention amongst its initial creators. Tetris involves shaped pieces that descend onto the player’s screen, where the player must do their best to fill any vacated spots with parts of the pieces as they fall. However, if the pieces don’t line up correctly and lines don’t disappear, the player’s screen can fill up fast, and the game will end once any uncleared lines reach the top of the screen.
The game of Tetris was one of the earliest video games to hit the global market and has since become a lasting part of many players’ childhoods and video game abilities. The 2015 Adam Sandler movie Pixels depicted parts of the game, as well as popular games of the 1980s era like Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Galaga, Centipede, and Donkey Kong. Around 2014, there had been rumors that the Tetris Company would make a movie about the game and that it would entail a large-scale science fiction element to its plot, but nothing ever materialized from that concept.
