Taron Egerton talks Tetris' wild story, his ongoing partnership with Matthew Vaughn, and why fan-casting rumors can be "frustrating"

gamesradar.com:

Video game adaptations might be having a resurgence, but while The Last of Us and The Super Mario Bros. Movie are all about embracing the source material, Tetris takes a different tact. The new Taron Egerton-led drama doesn’t have an anthropomorphized square in sight, instead focusing on the story behind the addictive game – and it’s all the more wild for it. 

Set in the backdrop of the late 1980s, Tetris tells the (mostly) true story of how Henk Rogers’ determination to bring the addictive game global almost cost him everything. After seeing a demonstration of the puzzle game at a Las Vegas trade show, he flies across the world to the USSR to try and buy its rights, working with everyone from Nintendo to the KGB to make it happen.

"I was compelled and delighted by how crazy it is, really," star Egerton tells GamesRadar+ via Zoom from Texas, where the movie had its world premiere at SXSW. "I just found it to be a very fully realized, compelling snapshot of time. Also, the story of this guy who despite all of the reasons not to go to [the USSR], went in pursuit of an unproven game about blocks that fall from the top of the screen to the bottom. I just thought it was zany and fun and kooky and would tap into people's hunger for the nostalgia of the '80s, and also the very broad fanbase of the game."

Tetris certainly has that, with its deceptively simple premise making it into one of the best-selling video games ever created. When GR+ asks Egerton what his connection with the game was, though, he laughingly admits that he feels like he should "sell it up" given our remit. 

"I can't claim to be somebody who plays games on a regular basis," he explains. "As a kid, I was much more so but they tended to be more platform games,