Tetris (2023) on Netflix
Video game salesman Henk Rogers finds Tetris at a 1988 electronics show and wants the handheld rights. The game belongs to a Soviet agency.
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- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.4/10110,788 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes82%
Trailer
Plot summary
The puzzle game Tetris, made by the Soviet programmer Alexey Pajitnov, catches the eye of the salesman Henk Rogers at a 1988 consumer electronics show in Las Vegas. The game belongs to the Soviet agency ELORG, though Rogers learns that Stein, a British entrepreneur, holds the worldwide licensing and has sublicensed it to Mirrorsoft, the company of Robert Maxwell and his son Kevin. Rogers obtains the Japanese distribution rights, then persuades Nintendo's Hiroshi Yamauchi to adapt Tetris for the Famicom, taking a three million dollar loan against his family home. Told that Sega has been promised arcade rights, he is sent to Nintendo's Seattle office, where Minoru Arakawa and Howard Lincoln agree to make Tetris the Game Boy's launch title if he secures the handheld rights. Realizing he must deal with ELORG directly, he travels to Moscow.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Tetris (2023)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- In August 2023 Dan Ackerman, chief editor of Gizmodo, sued Apple for illegally copying his 2016 book The Tetris Effect; he asked for $4.8 million, 6% of the film's $80 million budget, and the claim was rejected.
- Filming planned for Moscow was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 and moved to Scotland. Producer Gillian Berrie noted Moscow's architecture was partly shaped by Scottish designers, which helped the Scottish locations pass for the Russian capital, and Aberdeen-born director Jon S. Baird called filming in his hometown special.
SPOILER
For dramatic effect the film's interpreter is a KGB agent, which Henk Rogers already knew, and the car chase at the end never happened when Rogers left the Soviet Union.- To keep the pixelated look in 4K, the visual effects team scaled its designs to roughly 1:10, creating artwork 400 pixels wide, and in Adobe After Effects disabled a checkbox that otherwise smoothed lines and gradients.
- The pixel graphics used color to set the scene: red for Russia, blue for London and green for Tokyo.
