June 7th, 2008 | Return Home

As if he didn't have enough on his plate, Leonardo DiCaprio is set to star in ATARI. The film is about gaming legend Nolan Bushnell, who will be played by DiCaprio, and the gaming empire he built.

Bushnell was an engineering student, puzzle-lover and game enthusiast (chess, Go, early computer games) who 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.

Bushnell is only the latest real-life personality in which DiCaprio has found grist for his creative mill. The Oscar-nominated actor has inhabited author Tobias Wolff ("This Boy's Life"), poets Jim Carroll ("The Basketball Diaries") and Arthur Rimbaud ("Total Eclipse"), master counterfeiter Frank Abagnale Jr. ("Catch Me If You Can") and aviator-recluse Howard Hughes ("The Aviator"). He's also attached to films in development about flashy Wall Street felon Jordan Belfort and James Bond creator Ian Fleming.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

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