How the Tetris movie stacks up

Hello, it’s Chris in rainy Los Angeles. Tetris is a movie now. But first…Help us make this newsletter better by filling out this surveyToday [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Hello, it’s Chris in rainy Los Angeles. Tetris is a movie now. But first… Help us make this newsletter better by [filling out this survey]( Today’s must-reads: • An Amazon consultant [pleaded guilty in a bribe plot]( • Alibaba’s $20 billion logistics arm [gears up for an IPO]( • TSMC urged Taiwan to [produce domestically]( Puzzled Who knew that Tetris, that oddly addictive puzzle game from the 1980s, had such a dramatic back story? A new movie of the same name, out Friday on Apple TV+, takes viewers behind the scenes in the battle over distribution rights to the game. Part business biopic, part Cold War spy thriller, the nearly two-hour film is almost certainly the best ever made about international copyright negotiations. The film is part of Apple Inc.’s increasing presence in Hollywood. The smartphone maker is ramping up to spend over $1 billion a year on films for theaters and streaming, keeping most of its focus on movies that appeal to adult audiences, like CODA, which won the company a best picture Oscar in 2022. Tetris joins a growing list of business-themed movies, such as Amazon.com Inc.’s Air, the story behind the release of Nike Inc.’s Air Jordan sneakers, which hits theaters April 5. Tetris, the game, tests the player’s ability to quickly stack groups of squares. It was created in 1984 by Russian developer Alexey Pajitnov, then a low-level computer programmer at Moscow’s Academy of Sciences. Played by young and old, male and female, Tetris became one of the best-selling video-game franchises in history. But first, someone had to secure those distribution rights. That’s where the movie’s fascinating cast of real-life characters comes into play. They include Nintendo Co. President Hiroshi Yamauchi, soon-to-be disgraced British media mogul Robert Maxwell and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The focus is on Henk Rogers, a Dutch-American businessman who snagged what he thought was authorization to sell the game in Japan after getting a peek at the Consumer Electronics Show. Rogers, played by Welsh actor Taron Egerton, shuttles from country to county in a struggle to keep his stake in Tetris, with his mortgaged home and marriage on the line. Along the way, he develops a friendship with Pajitnov, played by Russian actor Nikita Efremov. In real life, the pair also became business partners, and now run Tetris Co., the exclusive licensor of the brand. In addition to Efremov and Egerton, known for playing Elton John in 2019’s Rocketman, there’s a strong team in front of and behind the camera. Oscar winners Ron Howard and Brian Grazer are producers, as is Matthew Vaughan, who directed and co-wrote the Kingsman films. Rogers’s daughter Maya guided the project for years. Rogers and Pajitnov also advised on the picture, although both have admitted in interviews that not all of what you see on screen is true. By the end, the film devolves into fistfights and car chases worthy of Argo or worse, The Fast and the Furious series. Apple held the movie’s premiere at the South by Southwest festival in Austin on March 15. There was also a screening at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco last week, as the tech giant tries to win over that influential and likely sympathetic audience. So far so good, Tetris has a 92% approval rating from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. —[Chris Palmeri](mailto:cpalmeri1@bloomberg.net) The big story Steep discounts and new safety tools are doing little to woo back advertisers who [ran from Twitter after Elon Musk took over](. Get fully charged China is trying to counter US “containment” efforts in tech by [deploying a “whole nation” system](. Venture firms are pumping millions into so-called return logistics companies as [e-commerce companies look to cut expenses](. Watch: Berkeley’s director of the Center for Intelligent Systems said the [responsible development of AI]( deserves a “serious conversation,” and Twilio’s CEO talked about why he’s [betting on remote work]( in TV interviews on Bloomberg Technology. A new Hong Kong fund seeks to raise $100 million this year for crypto startups as the city [tries to become a regional fintech hub](. A once-bankrupt Korean carmaker is trying to breathe new life into its fortunes with a [$30,000 electric sports utility vehicle](. 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