Atari, partnering with production company Entertainment 360, has granted Universal Pictures the rights to adapt 10 of its classic properties: Asteroids, Adventure, Berzerk, Breakout, Centipede, Crystal Castles, Millipede, Missile Command, Yars' Revenge, and Pong. All are aimed at "big-scale action-adventure fare." Universal declined to comment, but CEO Wade Rosen confirmed the deal, and the studio has already bought the first project.
That opening film springs from an original spec script by Matt Reilly, a longtime Universal exec turned writer, and Carl Hampe, a producer on Hellboy (2019) and Jungle Cruise, based on one undisclosed Atari IP. Entertainment 360's Guymon Casady produces alongside them. Casady framed the appeal around the games' very emptiness, saying "the best Atari games dropped you into a world and let your imagination do the rest," with the plan to "build an original, large-scale adventure around it."
The Obvious Problem
There's no avoiding it: these are some of the most plotless games ever made. Pong is two paddles and a dot. Breakout is a paddle and a wall of bricks. Unlike Sonic or Mario, most of Atari's catalogue offers a mechanic and nothing else, which is why the reaction across the industry has been a collective raised eyebrow.
That blank slate is also the pitch, though. With no established lore to honour or fans to anger, writers get total freedom to invent a story and attach a famous name to it. Missile Command has an obvious Cold-War-thriller shape, and Adventure, an early quest-driven game, is probably the most naturally adaptable of the bunch.
Reasons for Caution, and Optimism
This isn't the first attempt. Missile Command and Centipede films were announced in 2016, and Universal optioned an Asteroids movie back in 2009. None entered production, so Atari's track record here is a graveyard of fizzled announcements.
What's changed is the climate. Video game movies have gone from box-office poison to reliable hits, with the Super Mario Bros. Movie and the Sonic films proving audiences turn out in huge numbers, and that success is what's pushing studios deeper into gaming's back catalogue. The deal also caps a genuine turnaround for Atari, which has rebuilt in recent years by acquiring preservation studios Nightdive and Digital Eclipse and doing thoughtful work with its archive, after a detour into crypto. Whether any of these films actually reach cinemas remains an open question, but watching Hollywood try to make Pong work will be interesting regardless.
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