Atari has outlined its long-term corporate strategy through a series of recent announcements. Their main goal for the foreseeable future is to reposition the company: they no longer want to primarily focus on preserving and republishing classic titles, they want to become an actively expanding entertainment company. They do not plan to achieve this solely by creating and acquiring new intellectual property; they also intend to expand into Hollywood.
Atari and Universal Studios have signed deal together, with the latter receiving the first-look rights to 10 Atari properties. This agreement includes classic game franchises like Asteroids, Adventure, Breakout, Centipede, Pong, and others. It has also been confirmed that Entertainment 360 will be involved in the development of these 10 projects, and writers like Matt Reilly and Carl Hampe are already attached to the first screenplay. This licensing agreement aligns closely with Atari’s broader corporate strategy, marking another step in Atari’s transition toward becoming a transmedia entertainment company. Future moves from Atari may look like this one, where they attempt to expand their intellectual properties into other entertainment formats, like films.
This is not Atari’s first effort to bring its franchises to Hollywood, as several of their properties have been linked to film adaptations. Pixels (2015) and Wreck-It Ralph (2012) both featured Atari properties, although they were not the films’ primary focus. Other Atari IPs like Missile Command, Centipede, and Asteroids were also linked to cinematic projects, many of which never entered production. However, these older projects attempted to develop each franchise into an individual film, while the Universal agreement bundles all ten properties into a broader partnership for both companies involved. Another challenge facing these adaptations is that most of the franchises have little or no established narrative. Since most of the properties in the deal are minimalistic in nature, Universal has been tasked with creating original stories for these films using the properties’ gameplay, themes, settings, and iconography as guides. This approach is similar to films such as Battleship (2012), which built an original story around a minimal source concept.
It remains unknown which, if any, of the ten projects have entered active development, how committed Universal is to making all 10 films, and what people will be involved as directors and actors. The agreement between Atari and Universal is a first-look one, giving Universal the first opportunity to develop films based on the selected Atari properties: it is not a production schedule guaranteeing ten movies. Regardless of how this licensing partnership develops in the future, Atari appears committed to charting its own transmedia future As Wade Rosen, the CEO of Atari, put in an interview, the classic game developer is done being a “fast follower.”