The next gaming star to get their own movie has been around for quite a while, at the age of 43 Pac-Man is heading to the big screen. Bandai Namco Entertainment has teamed up with Wayfarer Studios to make the live action Pac-Man movie which will based on an original idea from Chuck Williams, the producer of the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie.
Quite what the movie will be about is unclear, will Pac-Man be an alien? A digital life form? And how will they get all the drug misuse past the censors, Pac-Man famously gobbles pills which make him race around at top speed and bounce off walls.
Pac-Man was originally conceived in 1979 by Toru Iwatani and a team at Namco. They wanted to create a game that would appeal to women, a market that many beat ’em ups and shoot ’em ups failed to capture. The character was based on a pizza with a slice cut out and was released in Japan as Puck-Man. The name was changed to Pac-Man for the western release as Namco noticed that naughty imps could erase part of the “P” in the title and create a rather rude word.
Since then there have been sequels, prequels, remakes and remasters, all of which mean Pac-Man is one of the highest grossing video games IPs of all time with $14 billion in revenue as of 2106. There have been two television shows, a single, and the classic Pac-Man sound effects and music have been sampled and used by many artists. However, this will be the first live action Pac-Man movie.
The most recent release for the yellow gobbler was Pac-Man Museum+, a collection of fourteen classic games. However, the collection came under fire as Ms. Pac-Man was renamed and redesigned as there is an ongoing legal case over the character which is far to complicated to go in to here.
I shall leave you with a top tune which I play quite a lot when DJ’ing. It’s a bop!
Source: THRÂ
