« US, June 7, 2008 – Leonardo DiCaprio will produce and is attached to star in Atari, a biopic of videogame industry icon Nolan Bushnell. DiCaprio’s Appian Way company will produce for Paramount. Brian Hecker and Craig Sherman (Bart Got a Room) will script.
As The Hollywood Reporter reminds us, « Bushnell was an engineering student, puzzle-lover and game enthusiast (chess, Go, early computer games) who went from fixing broken pinball machines to launching Atari Corp., a video game manufacturer, in the early ’70s. Its first product was a little game called Pong that transfixed kids in suburban rec rooms across the country and led to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of video game sales. Within a few years, he sold the company to Warner Communications for $28 million. »
The trade adds that the filmmakers hope Atari will have shades of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Tucker. »
