By Phil de Semlyen | Posted 27 Jun 2016

One of the new Empire’s many scoops and exclusives includes a chat with the man who’s bringing the unlikely-sounding Tetris movie to the big screen, Larry Kasanoff. Yes, this film is real; yes, it’s the beginning of a possibly new franchise. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Blocks-xit.

Is this, as rumours have suggested, designed as the first in a trilogy – or Tetr-ilogy, if you will – of Tetris movies? "That’s correct,” he confirms, “and purely because the story we conceived is so big. This isn’t us splitting the last one of our eight movies in two to wring blood out of the stone. It’s just a big story."

The filmmaker, whose CV includes Paul W.S. Anderson’s Mortal Kombat and an exec-producer credit on True Lies, is keen to stress that it won’t just involve anthropomorphised blocks doing battle. "We’re not going to have blocks with feet running around the movie,” he tells Empire, "but it’s great that people think so. It sets the bar rather low!”

The production, currently going by 'Untitled Tetris Sci-fi Project’ on IMDb, is conceived as exactly that. "We want the story to be a surprise, but it’s a big science-fiction movie,” Kasanoff reveals. “I came up with the idea as I was thinking about Tetris and the theme of creating order out of chaos."

Casting is already well underway. Presumably with an eye on the boom market of China, it’ll have a global feel and a partly China-set shoot. "I guarantee you it’s not what you think,” cautions Kasanoff, as we imagine what Fall Out Boy’s version of the Tetris theme might sound like. "No-one has come remotely close to figuring out what we’re doing."

Pick up the new issue of Empire on Thursday, June 28 for more on this, as well as a more familiar sci-fi property, Star Trek Beyond. Alternatively subscribe right now for the digital version of the issue.