Leonardo DiCaprio is attached to star in Atari, a pitch that writers Brian Hecker and Craig Sherman sold to Paramount Pictures on Friday about the godfather of the video game industry, Nolan Bushnell.
The Hollywood Reporter says DiCaprio’s Appian Way is producing the biopic, which the filmmakers hope will play with elements from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Tucker.
Bushnell was an engineering student, puzzle-lover and game enthusiast 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, which 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.
During the next three decades, Bushnell started many other tech ventures and also created Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theaters.
