Given that he made his name with game documentary King of Kong, which saw players going head to head over scores on ‘80s arcade titles, it seems somehow logical that Seth Gordon would now be getting set to develop and direct a reboot of cult 1983 thriller War Games.
You may recall the original, which found Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy as two teens that discover a back door into a military computer system. While they think they’re just playing games with the compu-brain, they discover that the tech intelligence contained within the military mainframe is treating their simulations as actual events and may just kick off World War Three if it launches nuclear missiles at Russia. Suffice to say, they have to stop it…
A remake has been on the cards for a while, though not as long as the sequel, The Dead Code, which finally arrived to little fanfare and slumped straight to DVD in 2008. But now MGM is spearheading a fresh take.
Any new film would naturally take advantage of today’s far more modern gaming systems, plus the fact that everyone uses the ‘net. And while there’s of course the question of why we need a reboot in the first place, we have faith Gordon might find something interesting to say.
It’ll also be the first non-comedy film he’ll have made since Kong arrived – his latest, Horrible Bosses, hits cinemas on July 22.