IBM Deep Blue’s historic chess match against world champion being developed into a movie

Before Watson dominated in Jeopardy! there was Deep Blue, another IBM supercomputer that — in a feat that once seemed impossible — defeated Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997. The story of that match will now be brought to the silver screen, reports Deadline. Disney has purchased the rights to create a film adaptation of The Machine, a play by Matthew Charman. He will write the screenplay for the movie, and Mandeville Films is set to produce it, though it’s all still very much in the early stages.

The Machine debuted this summer at the Manchester International Festival, and made its way over to the US earlier this month at New York’s Park Avenue Armory (pictured above). The play depicts the television broadcast of the Deep Blue competition and cuts to flashbacks of Kasparov’s development into a chess grandmaster as well as scenes of Feng-hsiung Hsu, who started the project to make the IBM supercomputer. If you want to learn more about Deep Blue, be sure to check out IBM’s recent site celebrating the 15th anniversary.