Coming to AppleTV+, the Tetris film is really about the story of the greatest business development deal of all time.
Maya Rogers, CEO of the Tetris Company, told me that the Tetris film is really about the story of the greatest business development deal of all time.
Naturally, she’s a little biased. After all, her father was the pushy guy who saw the potential of Tetris, sneaked his way into Nintendo to get a meeting with its CEO, and tracked down the rights in the Soviet Union to an obscure agency and a programmer named Alexey Pajitnov.
The film debuted in a premiere at South By Southwest show in Austin, Texas, and it will get a special showing next week at the Game Developers Conference. Tetris, directed by Jon S. Baird, is a biopic work of fiction that captures the essence of the deal — oh, and that car chase in the Soviet Union didn’t really happen.
The movie is about how Henk Rogers, Maya’s father, tracked down the creator of Tetris, Alexey Pajitnov, back in the 1980s and secured the rights to the block-stacking game for Nintendo. There are some Hollywood embellishments to the story, but it tells the story of what it was like to go inside the communist regime of the Soviet Union and emerge with a contract of all contracts for the game rights.
Maya Rogers said her father and Pajitnov are still great friends and business partners to this day. I talked with her at the recent Dice Summit. I’ve watched the film and I’ll give my impressions later this week. But it was hoot to see characters on the silver screen that I’ve met in real life.
The show will be on Apple TV+ on March 31.
Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
Can you tell me about the Tetris movie?
Maya Rogers: Yes, it’s a biopic. It comes out on March 31 on AppleTV+. It’s the story of Henk Rogers going to the Soviet Union and securing the rights to Tetris. It’s really the story of Henk, of Nintendo and the Game Boy, and of course based on the premise of his friendship with Alexey Pajitnov. We’re super excited. Somebody mentioned to me that this is the first story going behind the scenes with the people that make this happen. It’s not a made-up story. It’s what really happens in the game industry. Most people don’t realize how crazy the Tetris story was, this game coming out of a Communist country.
Henk’s character is played by Taron Egerton, who’s a wonderful actor. I’m in the movie as well, as my 10-year-old self, a little Japanese girl, and so is my mother. It’s also a celebration of Asian representation, with Japanese-speaking actors in the lead. It’s a story that transcends cultural barriers. It’s interesting given what’s happening in Russia today. This story is about the human connection and how Henk and Alexey came together around their love for video games. It’s about the common language spoken by games.
GamesBeat: How did that get started?
Rogers: It was kind of a crazy beginning. Previously we had a deal that was in the works, but it never came to fruition. When that happened there was word out there that we were doing a Tetris movie. A famous director said, “I want to make the Tetris movie.” I got connected with that director because he had said something publicly. That relationship didn’t work out. But from the beginning we were involved, from the script stages and hiring the writers. The script that was created was so good. So many things happened. Things were delayed. But eventually it got picked up by Matthew Vaughn, who directed the Kingsman series, a very famous British director.
