Is The World Really Ready For Movies Of ‘Missile Command’ and ‘Centipede’?

  Gamers and movie fans alike will know of the supposed curse of movie adaptions of video games. The team making the film could have as much cash as Kanye West after Kimmy gives him his pocket money, it could be as star-studded as The Expendables (only without the has-beens), but it’s still almost certain to be a barrel of balls.  

Did you see the Battleship movie a lil’ while back? Enough said. Even being video game-related is enough of a death sentence, a lot of the time. Damn you, Pixels. So, all in all, I’m not sure I was ready for this news on a Monday morning.

Centipede: The Movie. Missile Command: The Movie. Both of these are actual things that are happening. Just let that sink in, gents.

These two, for the younger, fitter, less-middle-aged-spread-y gamers among us, both hit the Atari in 1980. The first was a simple shoot ‘em up (with centipedes), while the latter saw you using a trackball to counter missile attacks on cities from the sky. Both are arcade classics, natch. Entirely bereft of plot, too, also natch, but apparently movie adaptions are a good idea.

As Polygon reports, Emmett/Furla/Oasis Films have partnered with Atari to make this happen, choosing these games in particular for their iconic status.

"Centipede and Missile Command are part of Atari's unparalleled and rich library of popular games and we cannot wait to see the movies come to life," said Atari CEO Fred Chesnais. ‘Even though they’ll almost certainly be monumentally, terrifyingly, unforgivably shit,’ he added. Except he didn’t.

So there you go. There’s no word on when production on these two will begin, so we don’t have to worry about them for a good while yet.