'Tetris' Movie True Story: How Accurate Is the Taron Egerton Movie?

The Tetris movie, which began streaming on Apple TV+ today, takes on the difficult task of transforming the Tetris true story—a legal battle over intellectual property rights—into a compelling, watchable movie. But this isn’t just any legal battle over a video game—it’s a legal battle that took place in the Soviet Union in the ’80s. So, yes, the stakes were high.

Directed by Jon S. Baird, with a screenplay by Noah Pink, the Tetris movie stars Taron Egerton as Henk Rogers, the enterprising young businessman who secured the rights to Tetris for Nintendo, and helped ensure the addicting, block-building game became a worldwide phenomenon. Who didn’t play Tetris on their Game Boy Color?

But it wasn’t an easy journey. Because Tetris was designed by a Russian programmer at the height of the Soviet Union, the forces of capitalism had to work extra hard to make as much money as possible. Read on to learn about the Tetris movie true story, and find out how accurate the Tetris movie is.

Is the Tetris movie based on a true story?

Yes. The Tetris movie is based on the true story of the popular block-building video game. Specifically, the Tetris movie is based on the messy legal battle for the rights to Tetris. Because the game was designed by a Russian programmer, Alexey Pajitnov (played by Nikita Yefremov) in 1984—during the reign of the Soviet Union—Cold War politics complicated the issue, to say the least.

What is the Tetris true story?

Dutch video game designer Henk Rogers purchased the Japanese rights to Tetris in 1988, after playing a demo of the game at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Here’s where it gets confusing: In Russia, Tetris rights belonged to a company called ELORG. Outside of Russia, the rights got very confusing. A businessman named Robert Stein (played by Toby Jones) signed a deal with ELORG to distribute Tetris on “personal computers” outside of Russia, via Stein’s company, Andromeda Software. Stein then struck a deal with the British business mogul, Robert Maxwell (Roger Allam) to give Maxwell’s company, Mirrorsoft, the rights to produce the game in the United Kingdom. From there, Mirrorsoft illegally licensed the Japanese rights to Atari. This is where Henk Rogers comes in: Rogers purchased the Japanese Tetris rights from Atari in 1988, for his company, Bullet-Proof Software, and began working closely with Nintendo.

Are you with me so far? Nintendo was working on a Game Boy prototype and wanted to load Tetris onto the device. But Nintendo needed the handheld rights to the game. Rogers contacted Robert Stein, believing that Andromeda Software had the handheld rights. Stein agreed to sign a contract to give Nintendo handheld rights but then began to give Rogers the run-around. Rogers began to suspect Andromeda had breached its contract with ELORG, so Rogers took it upon himself to fly to Moscow and negotiate for the handheld rights directly with  ELORG president Nikolai Belikov (played by Oleg Stefan). You can see footage of Rogers’ trip to Moscow in the 2004 BBC documentary, Tetris: From Russia with Love, available on YouTube. That footage is also featured over the credits of the Tetris movie.

By sheer coincidence, on the same day that Rogers met with ELORG in Moscow, ELORG was also meeting with Kevin Maxwell (played by Anthony Boyle), the son of Mirrorsoft’s Roger Maxwell, and Robert Stein of Andromeda Software. All three men were meeting with  ELORG to attempt to get the Tetris handheld rights. Belikov was disturbed when Rogers showed him a video game package of Tetris, claiming ELORG had never sold the rights for Tetris video game consoles, only for personal computers. Belikov accused Rogers of selling the game illegally, and secretly met with Maxwell and Stein, confronting them about the so-called broken contract.

Meanwhile, Rogers met and befriended the creator of Tetris, Alexey Pajitnov. Rogers also helped Belikov draw a new contract for Stein, that sneakily defined “computer” to exclude video game console rights, thus paving the way for Rogers to swoop in. Though the 2023 Tetris movie implies that Robert Stein deliberately misled ELORG with a shady original contract, both Belikov and Stein’s testimony in the 2004 BBC doc claims the opposite: It was Stein who was screwed over by signing a new contract, after not reading the terms closely. “I didn’t notice it,” Stein says in the documentary. “I will never forgive myself, so there we go.”

With Stein out of the way, Rogers still had to compete with Kevin Maxwell for handheld rights. He couldn’t offer as much money as Maxwell, but he had the Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov vouching for him. He offered to always be honest and upfront with Belikov. Belikov was won over, and offered Rogers not just handheld rights, but also console rights.

How accurate is the Tetris movie to the true story?

The Tetris movie is more or less accurate, but it definitely exaggerates key details for the sake of a more exciting movie. For example, the pretty young blonde woman, Sasha (Sofia Lebedeva), who serves as Rogers’ interpreter and ally in Russia is revealed to be a KGB agent, and this is meant to be a big moment of betrayal. Gasp! The reality was not nearly so dramatic. The real Rogers always knew she was KGB when he hired her.

In a 2014 essay written for The Guardian, for the 30th anniversary of the game, Rogers wrote, “I hired an interpreter [whose name was actually Ola, not Sasha] from a booth in the lobby of my hotel. They were all KGB, but she was beautiful and very perky, when everybody else was doom and gloom. She took me to Elorg, but she wouldn’t take me in because I hadn’t been officially invited. I was breaking a cardinal rule – trying to do business on a tourist visa – but I told her I hadn’t come all this way for nothing.”

There was also never a high-speed car chase between Rogers and the KGB, as you see in the movie, which ends with Taron Egerton successfully hopping on a plane out of Russia. In reality, Rogers took a very normal, uneventful flight home. (There is even home video footage of him dozing on the plane in the BBC documentary.) In fact, most of the KGB drama seems to be largely exaggerated. It is true that Roger Maxwell used his connections to former Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev to pressure Belikov, even threatening him, into giving the Maxwells the rights to Tetris. But the plot line of a KGB agent who was secretly working for Maxwell is entirely invented.

There was also an entire legal battle between Atari and Nintendo in the U.S. over console rights to Tetris that was cut from the movie. This played out over a series of lawsuits, with Nintendo coming out as the winner. But that wouldn’t be a very compelling movie scene, now would it?

Taron Egerton (left) and Henk Rogers.Photo: Getty Images for SXSW Where is Henk Rogers now?

The real-life Henk Rogers, now 61, is currently the managing director of The Tetris Company, which he co-owns with Alexey Pajitnov. The company was founded in 1996 and handles all of the Tetris rights. The real Rogers met with the movie director Jon S. Baird while the Tetris film was being made, and even attended the movie’s premiere at the 2023 South by Southwest Film Festival in March.