The scene: the Rocketman and Kingsman actor Taron Egerton is welcomed to the glitzy Bafta podium. He’s introduced by the dynamic duo presenting team, Richard E. Grant and Alison Hammond, as “one of Britain’s shining stars”, which is followed up with: “you’ll see him next as the lead in the upcoming Tetris movie”.
Having not been in the Royal Festival Hall to witness, I can only presume what happened next was a collective “eh?” followed by a few nervous titters. The Game Boy Tetris, Tetris? Is it a live-action remake of the game? Is Taron playing the straight, four-blocker as he battles alongside the evil Zigzag (presumably played by Billy Zane) to save friends T-bar (dream casting: Chris Rock) and Block (Jack Black, maybe?) from oblivion?
And yet, this wasn’t a prank orchestrated by Hammond, as a quick Google search revealed that yes, the Tetris movie is indeed a thing. There’s even a trailer.
What in the name of Nintendo is going on?
Despite the recent trend for turning computer games into half-decent films and TV series (see the not-actually-terrible Sonic films, the lauded The Last Of Us, though the jury’s out on the upcoming Super Mario Bros film), that’s not the direction Tetris the movie is going in.
Instead, similar to The Social Network, we’ve essentially got an origin story about the Russian computer program in the ‘80s, and the rights battle that ensued. It looks fully batshit crazy, but perhaps in a going-full-circle-so-batshit-crazy-it’s-good kind of way? “I played for five minutes,” says Egerton as the real-life videogame designer Henk Rogers in the trailer, “but I still see falling blocks in my dreams. It’s the perfect game” And… cue the 8-bit version of The Final Countdown vs. Tetris song mashup.
What is Tetris actually going to be about?
The film is set to explore how Tetris broke out of the Soviet Union to become one of the most popular videogames in the world. Suitably, that means a lot of ground will be covered: There’s the birth of the Game Boy, heralded by Ben Miles in a lab coat (he is playing Nintendo of America chairman Howard Lincoln)! There’s the introduction of the Russian inventor of Tetris, closely followed by dodgy KGB agents! Communist spies! Gorbachev! Toby Jones and Robert Allam! And blocks, blocks, those beautiful blocks!
While the official synopsis describes the film - directed by Jon S. Baird - as “the true story of how one man risked his life to outsmart the KGB and turn Tetris into a worldwide sensation”, it’s clearly going to be so, so much more than that. Perhaps the most surprising thing about Tetris, apart from the fact that the film is being made, is just how exciting ti looks.
When is the film coming out?
Remarkably quickly, actually - Tetris will drop neatly into the giant squares of your computer streaming devices on Apple TV+ on the streaming date of March 31. Get ready for those relentlessly tumbling blocks to invade your dreams once again.
