Down and to the left, down and to the right. Writer and producer Akiva Goldsman has just signed up with Warner Bros. to get arcade classic Space Invaders into theaters.

According to the announcement on The Wrap, the A Winter’s Tale writer-director will produce Space Invaders through Weed Road and Safehouse Pictures alongside Joby Harold and Tory Tunnell.

Goldsman has loads of genre producing credits, including I Am Legend, Fringe, and Constantine, and he’s spent the better part of the last 20 years writing films like A Beautiful Mind, Batman Forever, and A Time to Kill.

The film would be based on the 1978 arcade classic of the same name which lead to a yen coin crisis in Japan when it was unleashed by developers Taito. In the 36 years since its release, Space Invaders has been ported or remade on everything from the Atari 2600 to iOS. But in all of that time, story has never really been a focus of the franchise, which largely involved rows of enemy ships drop down toward your quick-shooting turret at the bottom of the screen.

Currently, no additional talent is associated with the project, so it’s hard to make any kinds of assumptions about what shape it might take – would it be a super serious drama? A crazy disaster movie? A winking comedy? Without a director or writer attached, I wouldn’t make any guesses.

This is the second go-around at a Space Invaders movie, following go-nowhere production under G.I. Joe and Transformers producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura.

[Source: TheWrap]