Coming to cinemas: The story of Atari

Los Angeles - Prepare yourselves for the latest video game drama to make the transition to movie theatres. But if you are expecting something on the lines of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Doom or Max Payne, think again. This story has no blood or guts, though there's plenty of sweat and tears. It's the story of Nolan Bushnell, who created Atari, the world's first video game company in 1972, and then invented the first popular video game Pong. The movie, to be called Atari, will star Leonardo DiCaprio as Bushnell, who counted Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak among his early employees before selling the company in 1978 for 28 million dollars. DiCaprio is also producing the movie which is being written by indie scribes Brian Hecker and Craig Sherman.

Nolan, who went on to found a popular chain of pizza restaurants with over 200 branches, turned down several requests to have his life turned into a film before agreeing to the DiCaprio project. "I felt that these guy got it in a very, very real way and (knew) what Atari stood for," Bushnell told MTV. "It's a little bit mind boggling. It's hard to wrap my head around."

"To me, one of the things that happened with Atari was that it was really almost against all odds," he said. "Nobody thought that video games represented a business. That's the part that I think a lot of people don't understand; if you really work it, you can turn your dream into a reality. It's not because the bankers like you, it's not because Wall Street likes you, it's because they all think you are an idiot. But if you keep your dream intact and just work as hard as you can, you can often pull it off."

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