Leonardo DiCaprio To Play Atari Creator In Film

Variety:

Paramount Pictures has snapped up a pitch titled "Atari," with Leonardo DiCaprio attached to star.

Written by Brian Hecker and Craig Sherman, project is a biopic about entrepreneur Nolan Bushnell, the creator of Atari and one of the founding fathers of the vidgame industry.

Bushnell and Ted Dabney founded Atari in 1972 and were instrumental in bringing arcade games, home vidgame consoles and home computers to the masses. Among the company's contributions were Pong and the Atari 2600.

DiCaprio will produce via his Appian Way shingle.

Although Bushnell's life rights had long been pursued by various suitors, Hecker and Craig Sherman persuaded the gaming pioneer that they could do his unique story justice.

Read the whole story: Variety

Comments

[Theda]

Leonardo has bought many new computers for the Los Feliz public library in Los Angeles. That particular library is located in the neighborhood where he grew up, so he's been very generous to the place.

[Agentlady007]

Leo is a the same sign as my late Hubby. Looks like him too when he was younger, which explains why my son looks like him. Leonardo has more fans than any young actor of his generation. The photgrophers followed him so much it became dangerous and he had to leave the country. No young actor of this century had reached this fame since James Dean. He was brilliant in The Beach and outstanding in Titanic. His perfomance as Howard Hughes was remarkable, and although I haven't seen him in years, it is so good to hear he is acting again, and threw that message in the bottle down the river of no return.

[rzan]

I absolutely love Leo DiCaprio. I am one of his "older" fans. I will see anything that he is in.

[Rockwell]

"Biopic about the nerd who started Atari, staring DiCaprio". That ought to pack em in.

Man, I don't know who has bigger balls, the guy who pitched that or the exec who gave it the green light.

[SharonB]

I don't know what was the cause, big balls, small brains or heaps o' cocaine.

[rbspickles]

I love DiCaprio's works! I'll see this one for sure :)

[43P04T34]

Which Founder of Atari?

Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore Business Machines, bought a wreck of a company from Time-Warner that some guy named Bushnell sold them, then built that into a pretty decent computer company in the 1980's featuring the ground-breaking, innovative Atari ST. Jack was a survivor of the concentration camps of WWII. I think a story about Jack Tramiel would be a great movie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Tramiel