'Space Invaders' Video Game Headed to Big Screen (Exclusive)

Get ready for the Space Invaders movie.

The classic 1980s arcade game from Taito and Midway, which is ranked as the top arcade game of all time by Guinness World Records, is heading to the big screen courtesy of producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Odd Lot Entertainment’s Gigi Pritzker. 1212 Entertainment's Joshua Long, Elizabeth Grave and Roberto Grande are also producing. 

The two have teamed up to option the rights and develop the project and are now on the hunt for a writer to come up with a story.

One of the first video games, Space Invaders is credited with taking the medium from a sideshow attraction to a mainstream obsession. The shooter game was technically released in 1978 but made its pop culture mark by the turn of the decade. It featured rows upon rows of aliens (or their ships) raining laser death upon a lone player who took cover behind slowly disintegrating blocks. There have been other rumored attempts to develop a film but none has gone anywhere.

With Space Invaders, the producers are facing an interesting challenge: The video game doesn’t have a built-in mythology, so on one hand a film won’t risk offending game fans. Conversely, coming up with a captivating universe, especially for video game adaptations, is no easy task.

For di Bonaventura, Space Invaders is the latest of a string of projects based on 80s touchstones. He is a producer on the Transformers and G.I. Joe movies, both based on popular Me Decade toys. And he is developing Asteroids, based on the classic arcade game, and a remake of 1989's Pet Sematary.

Pritzker’s Odd Lot is one of the key companies behind Drive, the much-buzzed-about thriller from Nicolas Winding Refn and starring Ryan Gosling, and is a producer on Ender’s Game, the adaptation of the Orson Scott Card sci-fi novel.

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