TV Article 'Pixels': EW preview By Nina Terrero Published on April 10, 2015 12:00PM EDT Photo: George Kraychyk STARRING Adam Sandler, Peter Dinklage, Josh Gad DIRECTED BY Chris Columbus NOT YET RATED RELEASE DATE July 24 Get ready, gamers. If aliens ever send ’80s arcade-game characters to Earth to destroy us, you’ll be our first line of defense. That’s how it all plays out in Chris Columbus’ action comedy, in which former console kings (Adam Sandler, Peter Dinklage, Josh Gad) battle once-benign creatures like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. “We had to peel away some of that innocence to make them really life-threatening,” says Columbus. A giant 3-D Pac-Man might actually be less menacing than Dinklage’s character, a mulleted geek–turned–criminal goon. Says Columbus: “Peter delivers a performance that’s unlike anything you’ve seen.”