Now Playing: Tetris, The Sci-Fi Movie; Retro Game Inspires Trilogy

A joint venture between a U.S. producer and a Chinese entertainment investor, announced Tuesday, is hoping to make a live-action film based on the classic video game, Tetris. To be exact, Threshold Global Studios, a partnership between California studio Threshold Entertainment Group — owned by producer Larry Kasanoff — and China’s Seven Star Works — owned by investor Bruno Wu — plans to make a science fiction trilogy based on the popular 1980s game.

A statement released by the joint venture said the film adaptation of Tetris will be the company’s first project and will be produced at a budget of about $80 million. The film will be shot in China and feature an ensemble cast, including Chinese actors. The financing for the film, as well as a story, are already in place, according to the statement.

Kasanoff has already directed two Mortal Kombat films — also inspired by the eponymous video games. He said Tetris, as “one of the most recognized video game franchises of all time, is a perfect first project” for the company’s strategy of making “cross-cultural movies for the global market.”

Details about it the yet-to-be-made movie, including its title, were not revealed in the statement, with Kasanoff only referring to it as “an epic sci-fi thriller.”

Tetris as a game has nothing to do with science fiction. It is a puzzle game where pieces of different shapes must be arranged symmetrically, and its difficulty increases as the speed at which new pieces appear keeps increasing.

Tetris Company, owner of the Tetris brand, has been involved in discussions with the Threshold team for over a year, according to Deadline, which first reported the story. Talks of making the game into a movie have been going on for about 2 years. There was even a movie trailer released in 2012, which showed the Tetris blocks as aliens invading Earth.