Joust: The Movie?

Michael Cerenzie Black Water Transit and Christine Peters' new production banner, CP Productions have officially announced that they have bought the rights to make the stupidest video game adaptation of all time. Okay, they didn't exactly make the announcement with that context – I'm pretty sure they actually believe this is a good idea. According to Variety, they have secured an option to produce a film based on the 1982 arcade game Joust, from Midway Games.

In the original game, the player takes the role of a knight with a lance, mounted on either an ostrich (player 1) or an emu (player 2), battling waves of computer-controlled enemy knights of different speed and agility levels, mounted on giant buzzards. The game's screen was completely static, consisting of five platforms hanging in mid-air, and the ground which is surrounded by a pit of lava inhabited by a lava troll. Joust has been ported to the Atari's own 2600, 5200, 7800; Lynx and ST, NES, Sony PlayStation, Sega Saturn, Nintendo 64, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, PC, Xbox 360, BBC Micro and Palm OS.

Now someone please tell me, how will they make a movie out of the simplest of video games? Pac Man and Pong are probably the only other popular video games which might be harder to adapt to the big screen. And yes, I do understand that they will probably adapt this into a Lord of the Rings-type fantasy tale (or at least that's how I imagined how the pitch went), and if so, why do you even need the brand name at all? I'm sure the targeted movie-going demo probably doesn't even recognize the game title.