'Space Invaders' Movie Still Developing At New Line, Finally Has A Writer

Warner Bros. has been trying to make a Space Invaders movie for almost ten years. We first wrote about the project back in 2010, when producer Jason Blum was one of a few people in talks to make it happen. Blum went on to become one of the most prominent, successful producers in Hollywood, but all the while, Space Invaders was still on a back burner somewhere at WB.

Now the studio has offloaded the project to its New Line Cinema branch and finally hired a writer in the hopes of breathing some cinematic life into the 1970s arcade game. Get the details below.

Deadline reports that New Line has hired writer Greg Russo (no relation to Anthony and Joe) to write the script for this movie, although it's unclear what the approach is going to be for this adaptation. The Taito arcade game debuted in 1978, and featured rows of pixelated aliens descending from their spaceships toward human strongholds, and fast-fingered players had to blast as many of them as possible or risk being overrun.

It's incredibly primitive to gamers who are used to more modern entertainment, but it was groundbreaking in its day and set the stage for many copycat shoot-'em-up games in the following years. The plot is simple enough that its premise can be summed up in just five words: aliens invade, humans fight back. That's so broad and vague that it leaves a ton of room for a creative screenwriter to find an interesting way into this story, so hopefully Russo is up to the task.

Russo is no stranger to video game movies: he wrote the upcoming Mortal Kombat reboot, the upcoming Resident Evil reboot, and a screenplay for a Saints Row movie which F. Gary Gray is attached to direct. He also wrote a F.E.A.R. adaptation for Machinima, and has Death Note 2 in the works at Netflix.

Joby Harold, Tory Tunnell, and – who else? – Akiva Goldsman are producing, because God forbid a single piece of intellectual property ever make its way through Hollywood without Akiva Goldsman getting his hands on it. Regrettably, Goldsman has been attached to produce this since 2014, after Transformers producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura optioned the property and seemingly let it expire.

Is anyone hopeful for a Space Invaders movie? It barely has any name recognition anymore; young audiences don't even know what an arcade is, let alone this specific game. That didn't stop WB and New Line from making a Rampage movie with Dwayne Johnson last year, so hopefully this one at least ends up being better than that.