The Tetris movie, directed by Jon S. Baird and starring Welsh comic book gentleman assassin Taron Egerton (Rocketman, Black Bird, Robin Hood), follows the extraordinary story of Henk Rogers, who was determined to acquire the handheld console rights to the Russian classic video game Tetris.
Alexey Pajitnov created the game, and the two men found common ground, leading to the formation of The Tetris Company. In the real world, the two men became firm friends, but a title card in the film has had some viewers curious about Dmitri Pajitnov.
Born on April 11, 1986, Dmitri Pajitnov was the son of the creator of Tetris, Alexey Pajitnov. He was raised in Moscow by his parents, Alexey and Nina, and had a brother, Peter.
When Henk arrived in Moscow, in his quest to acquire the Tetris rights, Dmitri was still a young boy. With the arrival of Nintendo of America founder Minoru Arakawa in Russia to sign contracts over the rights to the game, Dmitri became one of the first people to play the classic Game Boy console. After moving to the US, Dmitri became a first-year medical student at St. George’s University.
He was also a member of the Heavenly Mountain Resort Ski Patrol on Lake Tahoe and a keen black country skier.
A tragic accident led to the death of Dmitri in July 2017. Dmitri and his friend had been skiing at Mount Rainier National Park in Washington, but Dmitri fell through five feet of snow into a hole above Pebble Creek.
His friend tried desperately to locate him but had to call the rescue services, which would launch a search and rescue mission. However, the bad weather worked against the team, and they were hampered in their search as it became too dangerous for the crew to continue.
Dmitri would eventually be found in early August at the bottom of a waterfall 30 meters from where he had fallen into the creek.
His body would be recovered on August 19th, and Dmitri was buried at the Calvary Cemetery of the University of Washington.
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