Everyone’s heard of Tetris, but even the director of the new movie about one of the most famous video games in the world thought it was invented in Japan. When Jon S Baird (Filth, Stan & Ollie) first read Noah Pink’s script about the high-stakes business scrap for the intellectual property rights, it was news to him that Tetris was made in the Soviet Union. He exclusively told Express.co.uk: “I was so shocked and I thought, ‘We I have to make this movie because I want people to feel how I felt when I read the script for the first time.’”
Tetris was invented by computer engineer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984, but since he was a Soviet citizen the game and its rights were in the hands of the authoritarian state and negotiated by the KGB.
The film follows Taron Egerton as Henk Rogers, the Dutch video game designer who sought the handheld licensing for Tetris to be used on Nintendo’s Game Boy. However, apart from the dangers of bartering with the Soviet Union security services, the movie also charts him going up against billionaire media baron Robert Maxwell and his son Kevin for the rights to the video game.
For accuracy, both Henk and Alexey (who went on to found the Tetris Company together in the US) were consulted and approved of the movie. Baird especially liked that the Dutchman’s response to his film was: “It’s 100% emotionally correct.” And although the director did take artistic licence with some scenes involving punch-ups and car chases, it turns out that some of the more scandalous moments could have been depicted as rougher than they were portrayed.
After Kevin Maxwell read the screenplay, he told Baird: “I think it’s a good script. There are a couple of things in there you could have maybe changed but all in all I like the script. But I think you could have gone way harder on my father Robert Maxwell.”
The director added: “I won’t tell you the words he actually used, but he said we could have gone way harder.” It turns out Kevin also thought the Soviet Union scenes were pretty spot on but the KGB were probably scarier with all the following and recording they were doing.
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Baird also believes that his Tetris movie is surprisingly timely what with everything going on with Russia at the moment. He said: “One of Putin’s biggest disappointments was being part of the KGB when the Soviet Union collapsed. [He’s now trying to] rebuild an empire.”
The director also pointed out how kids today who didn’t grow up in the time of the Cold War will be reminded by the Ukrainian conflict of how dangerous those times were, especially if you dared to visit Russia back in the 1980s.
Meanwhile, Baird is now prepping his next film which he’s not at liberty to reveal just yet, but teased it’s with two of his favourite actors and “in the vein of Little Miss Sunshine.” As for other projects he admitted: “I would love to do one of the big musicals, that would be a dream for me.”
Tetris is streaming on Apple TV+ from Friday.
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