Video game adaptations have been the IP du jour for studios recently, and that upswing will continue through the 2020s with the upcoming “Call Of Duty“ and “Battlefield“ blockbusters. Now Deadline reports that Atari will get in on the action, as the video game company has signed a deal with Universal Pictures to develop 10 of its most classic games into film projects. Entertainment 360 and produer Guymon Casady is also in on the deal, and they’ll produce the first of those projects, with Matt Reilly and Carl Hampe on board to pen the screenplay.
As for which game the script from Reilly and Hampe will adapt? That’s a mystery for now, but here are the 10 properties Atari and Universal will team up for: Asteroidsm, Adventure, Berzerk, Breakout, Centipede, Crystal Castles, Millipede, Missile Command, Pong and Yars’ Revenge. Apparently, the pair aim to write something that’s on the scale of a big-budget blockbuster, so something like Asteroids or Adventure would make sense there. Whatever the first film is based on, Reilly and Hampke are good choices to pen it; Reilly was a longtime exec at Universal, while Hampe’s recent screenplay credits include “Hellboy” and “Jungle Cruise.”
Here are some press quotes from Atari chairman and CEO Wade Rosen and producer Casady on the Atari-Universal deal. “For more than five decades, Atari has created games and worlds that have remained part of popular culture long after their original release,” said Rosen. “We are excited to work with Universal and Entertainment 360 to bring the spirit of our iconic brand and games to a new medium.” And here’s Casady’s: “Matt Reilly and I grew up playing Atari 2600 games and have remained fans ever since. The best Atari games dropped you into a world and let your imagination do the rest. Carl and Matt saw an opportunity to take that same spirit and build an original, large-scale adventure around it. From the moment we read the screenplay, we believed there was a great movie here.”
Expect the first movie from this deal to hit production sometime late next year, and not to hit theaters until 2028. As for the commercial prospects of this deal? If Warner Bros. and Mattel could mastermind the mega success of “Barbie,” well, anything is possible.
