It’s an appropriate week for Universal to announce they’re making an adaptation of the classic Atari game Asteroids, because chances are the thing will end up opening on a 4th of July weekend. Just like Independence Day and Armageddon. Actually, as far as I can tell a movie of that arcade game could very well be a sequel to Armageddon. Except that Universal won the four-studio bidding war, and Disney did not (I’m unsure if Disney was even one of the bidders, which also included Fox and Sony). But Disney should go ahead with Armageddon 2 anyway in order to give us another summer like that of ‘98. DreamWorks can also get in the game with a Deep Impact sequel, but it’d probably have to be distributed by Disney, so that might be an issue.

I have to concentrate on when this thing will be, because focusing on what this thing will be is futile. And that’s the primary reaction to the news today: what the hell will an Asteroids movie be about that will fill up a feature-length running time? And why did four studios fight over such a simple property? Check out some of these reactions from the film blogs after the jump:

• Erik Davis at Sci-Fi Squad reminds us of why this was such a hot property:
  

  the object of the game was to navigate this space ship through an asteroid field and shoot down whatever crazy flying object got in the way. That was it — no storyline, no insane graphics — just a bunch of glowing dots on a screen. Obviously the cinematic possibilities are endless (ahem, sarcasm)

• Marc Bernardin at Entertainment Weekly’s PopWatch references the Armageddon connection:
  

  Couldn’t Universal — who won that four-way bidding scrum — just make a movie about noble men and women tasked with blowing up rocks from space without needing a game to base it on?

• S.T. VanAirsdale at Movieline compares the project to another hot property of yore:
  

  Atari’s thrilling story of a triangle and its mission to clear the cosmos of flying rocks. Long considered by Hollywood’s development community as the unadaptable Benjamin Button of classic video games…

• Dan Hopper at Best Week Ever notes that people won’t have the attention span for it:
  

  The movie will be remembered fondly by children from the 80s, but they’ll get bored and switch over to the Q-Bert movie after one quarter.

• Mark at I Watch Stuff thinks the studios picked the wrong video game:
  

  I can’t help but think this is a mistake. Not the idea of making a movie based on a game of flying around shooting asteroids, but making a movie based on a game of flying around shooting asteroids that isn’t Sinistar . At least then you’ve got an extremely antagonistic villain: [embedded YouTube clip]

• Mike Sampson at JoBlo.com also wishes the studio would adapt a different game:
  

  I won’t get into how moronic this idea is (why get into a bidding war when you’re essentially creating the plot from scratch?), but if you were going to adapt an early-80s-era video game into a movie, why not GALAGA? That at least has something to it. Or just take the money that you spent to get “Asteroids” and put it back into BIOSHOCK a movie based on a game that actually has an intriguing storyline…

• Alex Billington at First Showing is sure most of the other early arcade games will hit theaters in no time:
  

  For the longest time, it was always a joke that one day someone would adapt Asteroids. Now it’s really happening. I’m sure this means movies based on Tetris and Frogger and Pac Man won’t be too far behind either, right? God damn you Hollywood! Is there any hope for this movie?

• John at The Movie Blog is flabbergasted at the idea:
  

  ARE… YOU… FUCKING… KIDDING ME!?!?!?!

  You had to pay MONEY for the rights to a story about… well… NOTHING??? It’s a triangle shitting out little dots hitting rock like objects. You’re going to build a MOVIE around that? Seriously?

• Vince Mancini at FilmDrunk is also annoyed and amazed:
  

  A F*CKING BIDDING WAR.  For a movie based on three dots that shoot one dot at other small clusters of dots.  If you can think of anything stupider than this… someone in Hollywood will pay you a lot of money.  GREAT NEWS, EVERYONE, TOM CRUISE JUST SIGNED ON TO PLAY BLINKING LIGHT NUMBER FOUR!  SOMEONE FINGER MY ASSHOLE SO I KNOW I’M NOT DREAMING!

• Dustin Rowles at Pajiba is almost as shocked:
  

  This move makes absolutely no sense to me. If you just call your movie Asteroids (as five other movies have already done), no one is going to know it’s not based on the game unless you tell them it’s not. Is brain damage contagious? And does everyone in Hollywood have it? This is completely shitballsian.

• Sean at Film Junk believes the plotlessness of Asteroids makes this even more ridiculous than most game adaptation ideas:
  

  I mean, we all know that big screen adaptations of video games are usually doomed from the start, but when you’re dealing with a game as simplistic as Asteroids, well, I really don’t know what to say.

• Steven Zeitchik at Risky Biz Blog believes the plotlessness of the game is a good thing:
  

  “Asteroids” has about as much plot and backstory as a Cinemax special feature. Which means that, without the conventions of modern videogame storytelling to slow it down, it may actually work.

• Ross Miller at ScreenRant sees this adaptation as one of the least offensive of late:
  

  Still, of all the board game, toy and video game adaptations in the works, I think Asteroids is probably one of the most harmless. Since there’s no real story to the game, there’s no real story to ruin either. But nonetheless, it’s still irritating to see this Hollywood trend continuing at full speed.

• Annalee Newitz at i09 wonders what the game’s plot was originally and suggests a great idea for a mash-up:
  

  Why were you shooting the asteroids? Were they controlled by aliens? Were you trying to break them up so you could mine them for nickel in their cores? It was all an 8-bit mystery…Couldn’t they just combine Battleship with Asteroids so we could have a plotless tale of shooting that spanned skies and sea? Doesn’t that sound awesome?

• Andrew Mack at Twitch made up the perfect (and likely) plot synopsis:
  

  Aliens have redirected asteroids from the belt in orbit around the Sun, that one between Mars and Jupiter, and they are launching them at Earth, hoping to wipe out the human race from a distance. It’s up to the Asteroid Defense Human Defenders [ADHD - get it?], a collection of young, hot, thrill seeking space pilots to intercept these Asteroids before they become Meteorites and plunge into the soft recesses of our fragile Earth. They’ll be doing some plunging into some soft recesses of their own because they are so young and hot and thrill seeking. Either an Asteroid will get through their defenses, kill millions, and one of the pilots will have this big emotional moment where they torture themselves in grief only get their vindication when Earth can finally launch an assault on this Alien race and these pilots will be asked to lead the charge once they arrive at the belt. Or, one of their pilots will die, planting themselves on the front side of a massive Asteroid, and everyone will have a joined emotional moment then everyone can get their vindication when Earth can finally launch an assault on this Alien race and these pilots will be asked to lead the charge once they arrive at the belt. There will be lots of special effects and lots of explosions [which you must have even though there is no sound in the vacuum of space] and I wouldn’t be surprised if it is done in Real 3D. After all, it’s Asteroids damnit!

• Craig Kennedy at Living in Cinema may have gotten ahold of the script already — even if he’s joking, this is probably it:
  

  Apparently they’ve already written the screenplay and one of our Universal insiders sent over a few pages. Here’s an excerpt:

  Player 1: Blip… blop… blip … blop … blip … blop… pew pew pew pew pew boom… blip… blop.. blip.. blop.. blip.. pew pew pew pew pew pew pew.. blip.. blop.. blip.. whoop whoop whoop pew pew pew whoop whoop pew pew pew pew whoop whoop whoop pew pew pew pew pew boom… blip blop blip blop… boom.

  Player 2: Blip… blop… blip… blop…

• Amos Barshad at Vulture offers his plotmaking services to the project:
  

  As you’ll recall if you enjoy fun, the game consists of a triangle shooting at asteroids moving vertically down the screen — and that’s it. So, guys, if you need a hand with that screenplay or anything …

• Kyle Buchanan at Movieline jokingly suggests some casting ideas for the adaptation. Here is one of the proposed stars:
  

  Natalie Portman as High Score
  Like the High Score itself, Natalie Portman carries a whiff of unattainable prestige, and if Universal added her to the film’s cast, it would be a Twin Galaxies-worthy coup. It may seem like a lot of work for the actress — after all, she’d have to be on-screen at all times — but isn’t Portman due for some outer-space atonement after the Star Wars prequels?