Variety reports that the Universal Pictures adaptation of the popular '70s Atari video game Asteroids has gotten a new writer in Jez Butterworth, who wrote the screenplay for Doug Liman's Fair Game, the epic The Last Legion, as well as directed Nicole Kidman's Birthday Girl. More recently, Butterworth has written a James Brown biopic for The Help director Tate Taylor.

Produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura, the man behind three "Transformers" movies and two based on "G.I. Joe," earlier versions of the project were written by Matt Lopez and Evan Spiliotopoulos, but with vintage video games being very much in the public consciousness right now thanks to the success of Disney's Wreck-It Ralph, it makes sense Universal might want to try to get this long-in-development project moving forward.

This Asteroids news joins a spate of other recent news about video game projects including Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell.