You know Tetris mostly as a simple game, but there’s a special story behind it. Apple TV+ made a special movie about it. Now that’s getting a tailspin, as the company is being sued.
Almost everyone has played a game of Tetris at one time or another; the game is iconic. You have to form lines by making different cubes fit together. The story behind it is more complicated, and even the KGB came into play. Enough material for a book and a movie on Apple TV+.
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A game of Tetris between Ackerman and Apple
And that’s exactly where things start to fray. Daniel Ackerman wrote a book about that particular story called The Tetris Effect. That book hit the market in 2016, so it was around well before the movie, which only came out this year.
And Ackerman says he has a reason for that, too. In his book, he described the story as a spy thriller set during the Cold War. Let this be precisely the angle of the film on Apple TV+. He is not only suing Apple, but also The Tetris Company and screenwriter Noah Pink.
Ackerman does not go to work unprepared. He outlines years of correspondence with The Tetris Company when he wrote the book. As a result, the rights holder of the Tetris movie would have known about the man’s story and book. The Tetris Company allegedly even threatened legal action for pursuing film adaptations of his own book by framing the story from the book.
Is there any chance of success?
Still, it may be difficult for Ackerman to prove his claims. Both the book and the Apple TV+ movie are based on historical events. It is not as if he completely made up the story himself. Still, he claims that certain things in the movie were really taken from his book, such as speculation about a guide who is said to be a secret KGB agent.
Such lawsuits are not new. For example, there was another case surrounding The Conjuring in 2017. Yet that case was different because the film is based on paranormal events, so you can question its historical accuracy. This makes it closer to a story in a book.