Sonic Movie Producer Turns Tetris Into a Kids' TV Show

Of all the games you'd expect to get a kids' animated series, Tetris probably isn't high on anyone's list. There's no mascot, no villain, no world to explore. There are falling blocks and a relentless sense of dread as the screen fills up. And yet The Tetris Company just announced Tetris: World Builders, a CG-animated adventure show aimed at children aged six and up, with some surprisingly heavy creative firepower behind it.

The project was unveiled at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, according to The Tetris Company. Executive producer Chuck Williams, who worked on the Sonic the Hedgehog film adaptations, is attached alongside TeamTO producers Marco Balsamo and Tara Sibel Demren. Williams knowing how to turn a game with minimal narrative into a commercially successful story is exactly the kind of experience this project needs, because Tetris has even less to work with than Sonic did.

What Falling Blocks Look Like as a Plot

The premise, at least on paper, leans hard into educational territory. World Builders follows a team of young "Scouts" who must adapt their world after massive Tetrimino blocks start raining from the sky. They solve community problems using ingenuity, collaboration, and what the show calls "STEAM-based thinking," blending science, technology, engineering, arts, and maths into its storytelling. The series is still in early development, so there's no release window or network attached yet.

Maya Rogers, president and CEO of The Tetris Company, framed it as an expansion of the brand's identity. "For more than 40 years, Tetris has brought people together through a universal language of logic and play," Rogers said. "With Tetris: World Builders, we are expanding the Tetris universe in an entirely new way."

I'll be honest: the STEAM education angle makes this feel like it could easily become one of those shows that parents put on while kids zone out. But Williams' involvement gives me some actual hope. The first Sonic movie had no business being as watchable as it was, and that required taking a character whose game plots are barely coherent and building something kids wanted to see. Tetris is an even harder sell, which makes the creative challenge more interesting, not less.

What strikes me about this announcement is the contrast between how safe the pitch sounds and how weird the underlying idea actually is. "Kids solve problems with teamwork and creativity" is the most generic animated series logline imaginable. But the source material is a Soviet-era puzzle game about geometric shapes. There is no lore. There are no characters. The entire narrative framework has to be invented from scratch, and whether that freedom produces something original or something completely forgettable depends entirely on execution.

The Tetris brand has been on something of an expansion run lately, with Tetris Forever launching as a historical collection and documentary package. A live-action Tetris film starring Taron Egerton also told the story of the game's complicated rights negotiations. World Builders is a very different direction, targeting the youngest audience Tetris has ever gone after. With Williams steering and TeamTO handling animation, the talent is there. Now they just need to prove that falling blocks can carry a story worth watching every week.