The mind-numbing yet addictive 80s computer game Tetris is the latest console classic to be treated to the big screen treatment. Threshold Entertainment, which did the honours for Mortal Kombat in 1995 (and a sequel a couple of years later), has grand plans for the movie, which it promises will be “a very big, epic sci-fi movie”.

Threshold CEO Larry Kasanoff told the Wall Street Journal that what most players know of as the game, which was invented in 1984, and came pre-loaded on 1989 Nintendo’s Game Boys, is “the teeny tip of an iceberg that has intergalactic significance”.

Fears that each of the coloured blocks might be anthropomorphised were quelled by Kasanoff’s assurance that “this isn’t a movie with a bunch of lines running around the page. We’re not giving feet to the geometric shapes.”

Tetris is the latest, and superficially least likely, game to be cannibalised by the movie industry, following notable box office successes with the likes of Lara Croft, Resident Evil and Hitman. Scores of adaptations are currently in production, including Duncan Jones’s Warcraft, Minecraft, Assassin’s Creed – and a Mortal Kombat reboot.

In 2011 a documentary - Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters - set at the previous year’s world Tetris championships in Los Angeles met with some acclaim at the Austin film festival.