The film is part of Apple Inc.'s increasing presence in Hollywood. The smartphone maker is ramping up to spend over $1 billion a year on films for theaters and ...
Dutch video game designer Henk Rogers purchased the Japanese rights to Tetris in 1988, after playing a demo of the game at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las ...
The company was founded in 1996 and handles all of the Tetris rights. Specifically, the Tetris movie is based on the messy legal battle for the rights to Tetris. The Tetris movie is more or less accurate, but it definitely exaggerates key details for the sake of a more exciting movie. For example, the pretty young blonde woman, Sasha (Sofia Lebedeva), who serves as Rogers’ interpreter and ally in Russia is revealed to be a KGB agent, and this is meant to be a big moment of betrayal. Stein agreed to sign a contract to give Nintendo handheld rights but then began to give Rogers the run-around. The Tetris movie is based on the true story of the popular block-building video game. (There is even home video footage of him dozing on the plane in the BBC documentary.) In fact, most of the KGB drama seems to be largely exaggerated. Read on to learn about the Tetris movie true story, and find out how accurate the Tetris movie is. Belikov accused Rogers of selling the game illegally, and secretly met with Maxwell and Stein, confronting them about the so-called broken contract. But Nintendo needed the handheld rights to the game. Because Tetris was designed by a Russian programmer at the height of the Soviet Union, the forces of capitalism had to work extra hard to make as much money as possible. [Tetris](https://decider.com/movie/tetris/) movie, which began streaming on [Apple TV+](https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/tetris/umc.cmc.4evmgcam356pzgxs2l7a18d7b) today, takes on the difficult task of transforming the Tetris true story—a legal battle over intellectual property rights—into a compelling, watchable movie.
'Tetris' explores the true story behind the late 1980s legal battle that led to the classic video game becoming an international phenomenon.
Rogers also cemented a friendship with Pajitnov during his time in Moscow and eventually helped him to profit from the game he had invented. A tense three-way battle over the rights to the game ensued between Rogers, Stein, and Mirrorsoft owner Robert Maxwell (played by Richard Allam) and his son Kevin Maxwell (Anthony Boyle). Rogers’ arrival in Moscow with the Nintendo Famicon version of Tetris led to the revelation that Stein had been trading rights he did not own. Like in the movie, after Tetris was ported to the IBM PC in 1985 and began to spread throughout the Soviet Union, Hungarian businessman Robert Stein (played by Toby Jones) made an attempt to secure the computer rights to the game for his company, Andromeda Software. You’re not allowed to speak to anyone.’ And I said, ‘Well, I didn’t come all this way to stand in front of the door and go back to Tokyo to get a visa. Rogers went on to land a deal with Nintendo via his company Bullet-Proof Software, and Tetris for the Nintendo Famicon console was released in late 1988. “I am about to walk in the door and my interpreter says, ‘You can’t go in there,'” Rogers told Baird and written by Noah Pink, follows Henk Rogers ( [Taron Egerton](https://time.com/5591284/rocketman-elton-john-movie-review/)), a Dutch game designer who, after learning about Tetris at a 1988 Las Vegas tradeshow, traveled to Moscow to secure the game’s licensing rights from behind the Iron Curtain. [Apple TV+](https://time.com/6262001/extrapolations-review/) movie streaming March 31, explores the true story behind the late 1980s legal battle that led to the classic video game becoming an international phenomenon. It was in Moscow that Rogers met Alexey Pajitnov (played by Nikita Efremov), a software engineer at the Soviet Academy of Sciences who created the original Tetris on a rudimentary Electronika 60 computer. However, the contract expressly forbid Stein from licensing the rights to the arcade and handheld versions of the game, as well as any other mediums The puzzle game—which requires players to fit together geometric shapes composed of four squares to form horizontal lines—skyrocketed to popularity so quickly that in 1994, writer Jeffrey Goldsmith coined the term the [Tetris Effect](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20121022-the-psychology-of-tetris) to explain the psychological phenomenon that occurs when people devote so much time and attention to something that it begins to pattern their thoughts, mental images, and dreams.
As fact-based movies go, "Tetris" plays like a Cold War espionage thriller, which merely underscores the crazy amount of globetrotting intrigue that ...
The business aspect and the ’80s framing in some respects mirrors another movie arriving soon, Add to that Russia’s current war in Ukraine and the film possesses a timeliness that goes beyond just another Egerton helps hold it all together as a believable everyman, straddling the line between nerve and pigheaded foolishness. Rogers at first seems blissfully unaware of the danger to which he’s exposing himself, or the watchful eyes that could cause trouble for Pajitnov. Starring Taron Egerton, this Apple TV+ movie, like the game, is colorful and engaging enough that it’s hard to take your eyes off the screen. A P.T.
What makes Tetris 'the perfect game'? Experts break down an addictive classic. Nikita Efremov sorting pentomino pieces next to a computer in "Tetris.".
“I think Tetris, in many ways, was responsible for the success of the Game Boy,” said Fullerton. “I’ve got OCD [obsessive-compulsive disorder], and it really appeals to me, this game, because you compartmentalize everything, and then it disappears.” “It encapsulates a lot to say it’s the perfect video game,” said Tracy Fullerton, a USC professor and the director of its Game Innovation Lab. “The technology was mind-blowing back then.” This original Tetris was a computer game that eventually made its way to arcades and consoles. “It’s the godfather of all those types of game. And the film’s version of Rogers describes it as “the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.” “There’s no such thing as a perfect game,” said deWinter. Because you know what blocks are coming, but every time it’s a little different, and every time you play, it ends up a little differently.” Baird (“ [Stan & Ollie](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-stan-and-ollie-review-20181227-story.html)”) from a script by Noah Pink (“ [Genius](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-et-st-genius-review-20170425-story.html)”), the film follows Rogers (portrayed by [Taron Egerton](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2019-11-05/taron-egerton-elton-john-rocketman)) after he is so dazzled by Tetris, which he stumbles upon at a game expo, that he bets everything on its success. “And we need to play more, I believe.” [the center of “Tetris,”](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2023-03-29/tetris-review-taron-egerton) out now on Apple TV+ after premiering earlier this month [at SXSW](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2023-03-09/sxsw-2023-film-tv-what-to-watch-for).
It's the perfect game,” proclaims entrepreneur Henk Rogers in 1988, in the movie Tetris about the addictive, ubiquitous video game. Apple TV+ said the film was, ...
[University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa](https://manoa.hawaii.edu/) in the 1970s, and studied computer science. It’s the perfect game,” proclaims entrepreneur Henk Rogers in 1988, in the movie Tetris about the addictive, ubiquitous video game. Apple TV+ said the film was, “inspired by the true story of how [Rogers] risked his life to outsmart the KGB and turn
The real-life heroes who outran the KGB to bring Tetris to the world reveal the true tale that inspired the new Apple TV movie. It's a wild ride.
But I was really surprised that the movie is really compelling. In the end, Pajitnov has been cajoled into an Armani jacket and Prada shoes, and the pair retired to his house with a bottle of wine. He looks at Russia and can only hope that a movement will re-emerge to echo the changes of the late ’80s and early ’90s. To Rogers’ surprise Pajitnov approaches him at the end of the meeting and arranges to meet in secret later. Few ordinary people in the West realise in 1989 that the Soviet Union is on the brink of collapse. “I wanted to smile to him and be friends with him because he’s the creator of this great game,” says Rogers. “Basically I was invited for a routine meeting with some kind of con artist, or adventurer who pretends to be a businessman for Tetris,” he says. Skip forward half a decade to the start of the ’90s and Tetris is among the most played games on the planet. “I was looking for games to publish in Japan at the time. He boards a plane to Moscow, planning to put that silver-tongued charm to work in persuading Elektronorgtechnica (Elorg), the Soviet Union’s central organisation for the import and export of computer software, to sign off on his Nintendo deal. Rogers just has to get the handheld rights, and his games company is set to hit the big time. At the Moscow Medical Institute, they have a productivity problem – which, in a society where the state owns the means of production, is skating close to treason.
The film is a biographical drama about the origins of the puzzle video game, but earlier plans were for a fantastical adventure with magical elements.
"I'm sure there's a lot of things in there that they think, Oh, it's not quite right. "We couldn't get them across to the U.K. And then people watch the movie and they'll say, 'Wow this has nothing to do with the game that I fell in love with,' and then so they even p***** those people off." He continued, "We don't get to talk to those kids. The perestroika spirit and dark time of this communist era. "We had a lot of fun. Yeah, it's a game, but it's a movie about people. Tetris started shooting in late 2020, when strict COVID-19 rules were in place, meaning Pajitnov and Rogers couldn't be present during the shoot. That's according to both the creator of the game and the man who helped spread it globally: Tetris Co. Over the decades since the game's release, there have been a number of near-misses for a Tetris movie, with wildly different tones. "I've seen a lot of computer game [movies] go very strange," Rogers told Newsweek. They are the executive producers of Tetris, now available to watch on Apple TV+.
The new Tetris movie follows the incredible story behind the rather low-key game: these 10 films follow similar strange, unlikely tales.
[Moneyball](https://collider.com/tag/moneyball/), the story of Billy Beane and his part in the advanced analytics boom in baseball, so unique. [Bernie](https://collider.com/tag/bernie/) has a lot of the typical elements of a riveting biopic. [Adaptation](https://collider.com/tag/adaptation/) is not a biographical movie per se but includes enough biographical elements to qualify. In other ways, the focus on Kinsey's personal life and its relation to his work is redolent of A Beautiful Mind. However, its subject, small-town mortician Bernie Tiede, isn't the larger-than-life murderer of most other films on a similar topic. In addition, critics were complimentary of the film, praising its deft care and thunderous score, with Roger Ebert adding it to his "Great Movies" list in 2007. Interweaving episodes from Mishima's life with dramatizations of segments of his books, the film is Covering the final days of Pasolini's life, the movie is much more interested in the interiority of the neorealist filmmaker and Renaissance man. It is about scandal and about sex, but the actual sex in the film is not remotely scandalous. [may not seem like a David Lynch film at first](https://collider.com/movies-where-directors-deviated-from-their-style/), but upon closer inspection, it's obvious what drew the surrealist filmmaker to this picturesque true story. Following the film's writer-director Tommy Wiseau and its star Greg Sestero, the movie chronicles the duo's unlikely friendship, the disastrous production of the film, and how it became a cult icon. When thinking about what type of story is worthy of being made into a movie, it is usually extraordinary ones.
The story of Tetris the game is one of rule breaking, of multiple double-crossings and, in the movie version at least, of danger and intrigue.
Reilly, which traced the final years of the comedy team Laurel and Hardy.) Tetris adheres to some facts and plays fast and loose with others: apparently, in real life—unlike in the movie—there were no car chases and no Russian double agents. Baird surfs the story’s twists and turns nimbly, using clever animated mosaics made of Tetris squares to navigate tricky plot transitions. Tetris had become the property of the state. The story of Tetris the game—invented by Pajitnov but brought to the world by a Dutch-born American programmer and businessman named Henk Rogers—is one of rule breaking, of multiple double-crossings and, in the movie version at least, of danger and intrigue. Lost in the mix, of course, is the man who made it all possible. So he secures the rights to license the game in Japan—to be played on PCs, games consoles and in arcades, the only platforms available at the time—and thinks he’s headed for easy street.
Tetris takes some creative liberties with the true story of the Russian video game's bidding war, but those over-the-top moments ruin the movie.
The action sequences are well shot, and the digital effects where the action is recreated with Tetris pieces are a nice touch. The action scenes are totally low stakes and overly silly, and it's as if The Social Network ended with a car chase, which would completely undo the film's impact and feel totally out of place. It's completely unnecessary, and it shows that Apple didn't have faith in the material, but the studio should have, as the real-life moments are so engaging. The scenes that take place in Elorg where Nikolai bounces between rooms, negotiating with Maxwell, Robert Stein, and Henk, and playing them all against each other, are endlessly entertaining. As a result, Henk works with Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov to buy the rights from the U.S.S.R. on a tourist visa when he was conducting business, which was highly illegal and could have seen him imprisoned in the Soviet Union for years.