We often kid, in a good-natured kind of way, about the number of computer game conversions being knocked up in Hollywood these days. Indeed, when we first learned that lamentable license, Crazy Taxi, had been optioned, it provoked a minor tirade in which we took it upon ourselves to jest that maybe Pac-Man would be next. Well, it"s a sorry state of affairs when dreams such as these come true and, yes, you can expect the circular yellow star to arrive in cinemas sometime in the near future.
Having clearly run out of "good" licenses to bring to life, Pac-Man has been scooped up in a deal with the game"s creators, Namco, and the Japanese distributor. Production company Crystal Sky has landed the property but have yet to acquire a director or writer. "There is no other game title bigger than Pac-Man," a spokesman for Crystal Sky told The Hollywood Reporter. "From children to their parents, Pac-Man is a name everyone knows and loves."
Indeed, if you cast your mind back to the early eighties, you"ll remember this cutting-edge title. For those of you whose memories don"t stretch that far back, the plot went something like this: Pac-man (a kind of yellow orb with a big mouth) finds himself in a maze pursued by four rather unfriendly ghosts (curiously named Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde). The general idea was for our canary-hued hero to consume all the "pills" in the maze while avoiding the ghosts, however, some cunningly placed special pills lead old Pac-Man to go postal and eat up all the ghosts with a memorable, high-pitched "puk-doo" sound. And that"s it.
Still, it has all the key components of a Hollywood blockbuster: drugs, supernatural forces and homicidal rages. Throw in Miss Pac-Man (much the same as the man himself but sporting an attractive red bow) for some saucy action and they might well be on to a winner.