Tetris (film)

In 1988, Henk Rogers of Bullet-Proof Software markets his newest video game at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. While there, he instead becomes enamored with the game Tetris, created by Soviet programmer Alexey Pajitnov, who works for government-owned ELORG in the Soviet Union. Rogers explains to a bank manager that Robert Stein of Andromeda Software had obtained the worldwide licensing rights to Tetris from ELORG, and signed a contract with media tycoon Robert Maxwell and his son, CEO of Mirrorsoft, Kevin Maxwell, allowing them to distribute Tetris in exchange for game royalties. Meanwhile, the Mirrorsoft representative at CES had sold Rogers the Tetris rights in Japan for PC, console, and arcade.

Rogers obtains an audience with Nintendo CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi and proposes a partnership to produce Tetris for Nintendo cartridges and arcade machines. Shortly after beginning production, Rogers receives a call from Kevin, explaining that the arcade rights had already been promised to Sega. Rogers returns to Yamauchi, asking for his residuals in advance. Instead, he is sent to Nintendo of America headquarters in Seattle, and shown Nintendo's upcoming handheld device, the Game Boy, which is planned to be released with Super Mario Land. Rogers convinces president Minoru Arakawa and senior VP Howard Lincoln to package it with Tetris instead, and promises to obtain the handheld licensing rights.

He travels to meet with the Maxwells in London, who tell him that Stein retains all worldwide licensing rights. Rogers offers Stein $25,000 for the worldwide handheld rights, which he seemingly accepts. Later, however, Arakawa and Lincoln call Rogers explaining that Stein has now promised the handheld rights to Atari for $100,000. Kevin learns about this, and, while Stein promises to obtain the rights, both Kevin and Rogers decide to travel to Moscow to personally obtain them instead.

Rogers, Stein and Kevin each separately meet Valentin Trifonov, head of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs and member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, setting off a bidding war to obtain the handheld rights for Tetris whilst under the watchful eye of the KGB.

In July 2020, it was reported that a biopic was being made about the making of Tetris, which will delve into the legal battles that took place during the Cold War over ownership of the game, with Jon S. Baird directing and Taron Egerton cast to portray the game publisher Henk Rogers.[2] Egerton confirmed this report in an August 2020 interview, explaining that the film would mirror a tone similar to The Social Network.[3] In November 2020, Apple TV+ acquired the film.[4]

Filming began in Glasgow in December 2020, including Glasgow Prestwick Airport on the Ayrshire coast.[5] In February 2021, filming took place in Aberdeen at locations including the University of Aberdeen's Zoology Building, which was used as the headquarters of Soviet firm Elorg,[6] and Seamount Court[7] which was used for several scenes. Filming took place for 7 days in and around the former (RAF) military base at Balado in Perth & Kinross; particularly internal scenes for a quasi-military backdrop. Production then returned to Glasgow for a few days, before wrapping in early March 2021.[8][9] Reshoots took place in 2022, and the film's release was planned for later in the year.[10]

The film premiered at the SXSW Film Festival on March 15, 2023.[11] It premiered on Apple TV+ on March 31, 2023.[12] According to a Samba TV research panel of 3.1 million smart television households who tuned in for at least one minute, Tetris drew in 88,000 viewers in its first two days.[13]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 82% of 178 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.7/10. The website's consensus reads: "While it's nowhere near as addictive or fast-paced as the game, Tetris offers a fun, fizzy account of the story behind an 8-bit classic."[14] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 61 out of 100, based on 36 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[15]

In an interview prior to the film's release, Henk Rogers said that both he and Alexey Pajitnov reviewed the script and made suggestions. However, Rogers noted, "It's a Hollywood script, a movie. It's not about history so a lot of [what's in the movie] never happened." There were events in the movie that did transpire in real life. For instance, Rogers notes that he did convince Nintendo to bundle Tetris in with the Game Boy at launch in place of Super Mario Land. Rogers emphasized that the producers wanted to "capture the darkness and the brooding" that he felt during his time trying to get the rights to Tetris in then-Soviet Russia. He continued, "They tried their best to accept our changes when they had to do with authenticity. But when it started getting into [creative flourishes like] the car chase and all that, it was like 'OK, now it's all them.' We couldn't change anything."[16]

Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times criticized the casting of Egerton, a Welsh actor of English descent as Rogers, who is of partial Indonesian descent as whitewashing. Chang remarked in his review that the "suspension of disbelief" as Egerton "describes himself as being of partly Indonesian descent" was "tough to pull off in a story where cultural specificities are not exactly irrelevant."[17]

• Tetris: The Games People Play: 2016 graphic novel on the same topic

• Tetris at IMDb