The little retro wave that currently includes Asteroids, Battleships, Viewmaster and any number of Hasbro board games and toys continues to roll this morning, with the news that Fox are preparing a big screen extravaganza based on the hardy arcade classic **Missile Command.
Released in 1980, the game saw the player defending cities by shooting down a hail of ballistic missiles and smart bombs, but wasn't one you could actually ever win; it just carried on, getting increasingly difficult, until you died and your cities were destroyed.
Other than the basic set-up, there's no plot as such, so a Missile Command movie will be a ground-up invention of a new story. You might wonder what the point of calling it an adaptation actually is, although the name-recognition factor should extend further than hardcore golden-age gamers, since generations after its first release, Atari are still launching new versions. You can currently play hi-def versions on XBox Live and your iPhone.
The writers tasked with the job are Burk Sharpless and Matt Sazama, who wrote Dracula: Year Zero for Alex Proyas and have been working on the new Flash Gordon. There are no indications yet of the direction they'll take with the project. The original game's cities were supposed to be in California, and the scenario a Cold War one, but the instructions on some later versions had the battle taking places between the planets Zardon and Krytol.
Military action or sci-fi spectacle? Missile Command could even, we suggest, make for a Dr Strangelove style bunker-based armageddon drama, but the possibility of it actually being that are remote. Not much scope for 3D there.
Peter Chernin (Rise of the Apes) is producing, along with Atari's Jim Wilson. No start date yet.