What just happened? Bandai Namco Entertainment has reportedly selected an unlikely candidate as source material for an upcoming live-action film adaptation. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Bandai Namco is teaming up with Wayfarer Studios to create a Pac-Man movie. The film will be based on an original idea by Chuck Williams of Lightbeam Entertainment, who served as an associate producer on the 2020 Sonic the Hedgehog film.

Pac-Man hit the arcades in 1980. Players controlled the titular Pac-Man and were tasked with eating all the dots in a maze while dodging four colorful ghosts. Each ghost had its own “personality” based on unique artificial intelligence.

Players could advance to the next level by eating all the dots in a given maze. The difficulty increased with each level: ghosts moved faster and power-ups decreased in duration, eventually disappearing altogether. A bug resulting from a memory overflow error that triggers at level 256 causes half of the screen to load incorrectly, making it impossible to complete the level and ending the game prematurely.

Pac-Man was a massive hit and went on to become one of the best-selling and highest-grossing titles of all time. He spawned a cornucopia of merchandise, eight Guinness World Records, two TV shows and numerous movies. The upcoming film will be the first feature film based on the IP.

While its place as a pop culture icon is unquestioned, one has to wonder if it’s the best choice for a feature film. Bandai Namco has a huge catalog of original IP that could serve as the basis for potentially great feature films, including Ridge Racer, Time Crisis, Ace Combat, and Pole Position.

A sci-fi thriller based on Tetris was set to begin filming in 2017 courtesy of Threshold Entertainment. The movie would have had a $80 million budget but apparently fell from the surface of the Earth. A separate Tetris movie chronicling the game’s development is set to be released later this year.

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