Neil Patrick Harris Movie 8-Bit Christmas Starts Production

Production has begun on a new video game movie starring Neil Patrick Harris. The movie, 8-Bit Christmas, takes place in suburban Chicago in the 1980s, with a story that focuses on a 10-year-old boy's epic quest to get the best video game system for Christmas.

The movie is being produced by New Line for HBO Max. Parent company Warner Bros. says the film will offer a "humorous and heartfelt look back at the adventures of childhood."

There were a lot of popular home game consoles in the '80s, like the Intellivision, ColecoVision, the NES, and several systems from Atari, but whether or not any of these will appear in the movie remains to be seen.

The story centers on a kid named Jake Doyle, who is played by Winslow Fegley (Nightbooks, Come Play). Harris plays the adult version of Jake, and he also narrates the movie. June Diane Raphael (Grace and Frankie) and Steve Zahn (That Thing You Do, Sahara) play young Jake's parents, Kathy and John.

The screenplay for 8-Bit Christmas was written by Kevin Jakubowski, and he adapted it from his own debut novel of the same name. Michael Dowse, who directed Daniel Radcliffe in What If, is directing 8-Bit Christmas.

No release date has been announced for 8-Bit Christmas, but it will likely debut around... Christmas.

There are numerous other video game adaptations in the work for the screen, with Sony's Uncharted movie with Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg coming in 2022 and a Borderlands film with a great cast also in the works.