It looks like Leonardo DiCaprio will be starring in a biopic about Atari founder Nolan Bushnell! We get the following scoop from the legendary caves of Yahoo:
The actor will star in and produce “Atari,” a project about the godfather of the video game industry, Nolan Bushnell. The engineering student, puzzle-lover and game enthusiast 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. During the next three decades, Bushnell started many other tech ventures and also created Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theaters.
There are a lot of bioipcs coming down the pipe, but this one stands out, and has certainly caught my attention. I remember being 5 and getting my first Atari 2600. My brother and I were blown away by the system and many hours were played on that machine. I remember sucking at a game called River Raid. My father and brother were awesome at it…. but I was unable to master the river. In any event, the Atari was my gateway into the world of video games, and I am forever in the debt of Nolan Bushnell.
I had no idea that Nolan went on to make other businesses including Chuck E. Cheese’s. This guy is a visionary that leaves fun in his wake.
DiCaprio seems to have a skill for biopics and I welcome him in this role. I am pumped to see this film and am interested in the story of the man who made video games a household phenomena.
