A few days ago I attended the New York City press junket for “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra”. While there, I got to speak with some of the cast, director Stephen Sommers and producer Lorenzo de Bonaventura. While I’ve already spoken to Lorenzo a lot about “G.I. Joe” and “Transformers“, you can never go wrong asking a few more questions as he producers a lot of other movies.

So after the first few questions on “G.I. Joe” and “Giant Robots That Like to Punch Each Other in the Face”, I asked him about some of his upcoming projects and he told me the status on Jack Ryan, “Red”, and also why he wanted to make an “Asteroids” movie. Take a look after the jump:

Continuing its commitment to making a movie out of anything a child can play with, Universal is adapting the old, old school game video game “Asteroids” according to The Hollywood Reporter.  Why, “Asteroids”, I’m not exactly sure.  Was “Pong” taken?*  And furthermore, why not grab something with a little more creative room?  I think if you got someone creative and insane enough, you could make an interesting “Pac-Man” movie (this t-shirt is probably more creative and has more story than the inevitable film).

Back to “Asteroids” wasn’t this movie already made as “Armageddon”?  And if “Armageddon” taught us anything (and I’m almost 100% sure it didn’t), you can’t shoot asteroids in order to blow them up.  You have to land on them and implant them with a nuclear bomb.  And after Jason Isaacs sold us on why you have to do that using his firecracker analogy, audiences will refuse to accept an isosceles triangle destroying asteroids without the help of the world’s best deep-core drilling team and a nuclear weapon.

*As an aside, my friend and current kick-ass film editor David Solomon wrote the world’s first “Pong” fan-fic in 2001.  You can read it here.