Tetris: The Movie makes jump from lame joke to real thing that actually exists

Taron Egerton and Toby Jones star in a movie that tells the story of how Nintendo fought with Robert Maxwell for the rights to Tetris.

It doesn’t star Robert De Niro as L-shaped block but there is an actual real Tetris movie now in production and it actually looks like it could be quite good.

It’s out in March, so we’re not sure why nobody’s ever mentioned its existence up till now, but rather than featuring talking tetrominoes, or any other such nonsense, it tells the story of how Nintendo got the rights to Tetris (which is a launch game for the PlayStation VR2) on the Game Boy.

The story is a genuinely fascinating one and we imagine the film borrows quite a bit from David Sheff’s 1993 book Game Over, even if it seems to be underplaying the role of Nintendo figures such as Minoru Arakawa.

The main character is Dutch entrepreneur and video game designer Henk Rogers, played by Kingsman star Taron Egerton, along with Toby Jones as Robert Stein – who was first to realise the game’s global potential.

Even if you’re not familiar with the story, the film features many famous figures from Nintendo history, including former Nintendo of America chairman Howard Lincoln and Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi.

We don’t see any mention of Gunpei Yokoi, who created the Game Boy and was the producer of the Nintendo version of the game, in the IMDB listing, but Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov and Robert Maxwell are definitely in it, as is Mikhail Gorbachev.

Maxwell was trying to leverage his contacts in the Kremlin to make sure he got the rights to the game, which is probably not the level of Cold War intrigue most players at the time imagined for the game.

It doesn’t seem like the film is getting a theatrical release but is instead an Apple TV+ exclusive, set for a March 31 release.

Although the idea of an action movie based on Tetris has been a running joke for decades one was actually planned at one point, with an announcement in 2014 threatening a trilogy of films that would form an ‘epic sci-fi adventure.’

That’s not what this is, but perhaps if it does well Robert De Niro can start brushing up on his skills, ready for the Tetris Cinematic Universe.

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Taron Egerton and Toby Jones star in a movie that tells the story of how Nintendo fought with Robert Maxwell for the rights to Tetris.