Yahoo Movies How Kingsman 3 delays led to Tetris movie
Tetris director Jon S Baird has revealed the making of the movie was a happy accident off the back of a Kingsman 3 delay.
Baird sat down with Digital Spy for a chat about the Taron Egerton-starring movie on the war to secure the rights to the addictive block-stacking game.
The filmmaker was working with fellow director Matthew Vaughn on the next chapter about Egerton's spy Eggsy when the threequel was pushed back. That created an opportunity for the creative team to focus on bringing Tetris to audiences.
"I was working with Matthew [Vaughn] on Kingsman 3 on the six months leading up to when we received the script for Tetris," Baird said.
Related: New character details teased for Kingsman 3 and Kingsman: The Great Game
"Taron was gonna be in that movie, so I had conversations with Taron, and when that movie got put on hold, it was an automatic, 'We're gonna shift from this project over to that project'. The three of us jumped over at the same time."
The director explained that Egerton had experience in portraying real-life figures following his turns in Eddie the Eagle and Rocketman, for which he won a Golden Globe. Similarly, Baird has been cutting his biopic teeth on both Stan & Ollie and Cass, so it seemed a no-brainer for them to get together.
"It felt like the right fit that we all were bringing things to the table that we could potentially make this a great film," he said.
Related: Taron Egerton teases the "extraordinary" true story of Tetris
Speaking about Tetris's real-life wild story, what drew Baird to the 1980s battle to secure the intellectual property rights to the game was how passionate designers Henk Rogers and Alexey Pajitnov were.
"There's so much of it," the director said, when asked about what surprised him the most. "Just the fact that some crazy computer guy – computer nerd for want of a better description for Henk – who is a lovely guy, put himself in this extreme danger and risked everything for this unproven, at the time, video game.
"Throughout the film, when I was reading the script, I was thinking, 'This can't be true'.
"There's so much to it, but just in general, the amount that Henk and Alexey were willing to risk, because Alexey is as much a heroic figure as Henk is in this film. The whole thing shocked me."
Tetris is released in select cinemas and on Apple TV+ from March 31.
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