Video game adaptations have become one of Hollywood’s most dependable genres, moving well past the days when the category was defined almost entirely by critical disasters. From acclaimed television adaptations to billion-dollar animated franchises, studios have learned that source material built around beloved characters and worlds can translate into box-office gold when handled with care. Atari, one of the oldest names in the entire games industry, is now betting that the same logic can apply to titles that predate modern storytelling conventions entirely, some of which amount to little more than a paddle, a ball, and a black screen. The Deal, Explained According to reporting that broke earlier this week, Atari has signed an agreement with Universal Pictures, in partnership with production company Entertainment 360, granting Universal the rights to develop film adaptations based on ten of Atari’s most recognizable properties. The list reads like a museum exhibit of arcade history: Asteroids, Adventure, Berzerk, Breakout, Centipede, Crystal Castles, Millipede, Missile Command, Pong, and Yars’ Revenge. Atari’s chairman and chief executive framed the partnership as an opportunity to carry more than five decades of cultural relevance into an entirely new medium, expressing enthusiasm about seeing the spirit of these games reach audiences who may never have held an Atari controller. What makes this deal unusual isn’t just the scope, ten separate properties bundled into a single agreement, but the source material itself. Unlike modern adaptations of narrative-driven franchises such as The Last of Us or Fallout, most of the games on this list have essentially no plot, characters, or dialogue to draw from. Pong is two paddles and a ball. Breakout is a wall of bricks. Missile Command is a screen of incoming projectiles and a handful of cities to protect. Translating that into ninety minutes of narrative filmmaking will require Universal’s creative teams to build almost everything from scratch, using only a title, a visual motif, and decades of cultural nostalgia as a foundation. What’s Already in Motion Universal has reportedly already purchased a spec screenplay tied to the new partnership, written by Matt Reilly and Carl Hampe, with production expected to be handled by Entertainment 360’s Guymon Casady. Neither Atari nor Universal has confirmed which of the ten properties inspired that first script, and speculation has run wild in gaming circles about which of these decades-old arcade classics might be the first to make it to a theater near you. Some commentators have joked that a Pong film could resemble a sports-underdog drama in the vein of a competitive table tennis story, while Missile Command lends itself naturally to a Cold War-era thriller, and Breakout’s prison-adjacent name has invited comparisons to classic incarceration dramas. Centipede and Millipede present a trickier challenge tonally, given their insect-based premises, and jokes about unfortunate associations with unrelated horror films have already begun circulating online. Adventure, meanwhile, holds a special place in gaming history as one of the earliest action-adventure titles to include a hidden Easter egg, crediting its programmer by name inside a secret room, a detail that could make for a clever meta moment if any future script chooses to acknowledge the medium’s own history. Not Atari’s First Attempt This isn’t the first time Hollywood has come calling for Atari’s back catalog. Universal previously secured adaptation rights to Asteroids back in 2009, and separate film projects tied to Missile Command and Centipede were both announced around 2016. None of those earlier efforts ever made it to production, and industry watchers have been quick to note the irony of Universal circling back to some of the very same titles nearly two decades later. Whether the new, consolidated ten-game deal fares any better than its predecessors will likely depend on how disciplined Universal is about picking a genre and tone that actually fits the material, rather than trying to force a plot onto games that were never built to carry one. It’s also worth noting that Atari’s own corporate history is almost as tangled as the deal itself. The company operating under the Atari name today is owned by Atari SA, previously known as Infogrames, following decades of licensing splits, bankruptcies, and brand sales that have made “Atari” more of an umbrella trademark than a single continuous studio. That ownership structure opens the door to future film rights covering other properties under the wider Atari umbrella, including RollerCoaster Tycoon and System Shock, both of which have far more built-in narrative potential than Pong ever will. Why Hollywood Keeps Coming Back to Games The timing of this announcement lines up with a broader industry pattern. Video game adaptations have shifted from being seen as box-office poison to genuinely bankable properties, with successes across both streaming television and theatrical releases proving that audiences will show up for stories rooted in games they grew up playing, provided the execution respects the source material. Atari, in that sense, is positioning itself less as a games company licensing a handful of titles and more as an intellectual property holder sitting on decades of instantly recognizable brand names, each with built-in audience awareness even among people who have never played the original games. For a company that has weathered its share of financial turbulence over the decades, a successful multi-picture deal with a major studio could represent a meaningful new revenue stream independent of game sales, hardware licensing, or its recent moves into acquiring studios like Nightdive Studios and Digital Eclipse. It also signals renewed confidence in the Atari brand at a moment when the company has been actively investing in its own legacy, from remastered game collections to new retro-styled hardware. What Comes Next Don’t expect any of these ten films to hit theaters imminently. Development deals of this scope typically take years to move from script to greenlight to actual production, and history suggests that not every project announced under this agreement will make it to the screen. Still, the sheer novelty of the pairing, iconic 1970s and 1980s arcade cabinets reimagined as modern blockbuster cinema, guarantees that every future update on this deal will draw outsized attention, if only because it’s genuinely hard to predict what a Centipede movie is even supposed to look like. Fans Are Already Casting the Films In the hours since the news broke, gaming and film communities alike have taken to social media to imagine, often with tongues firmly in cheek, how a two-dimensional arcade cabinet might be stretched into a feature-length screenplay. Suggestions have ranged from the earnest to the absurd, including pitches for Yars’ Revenge as a cosmic horror survival story, Crystal Castles reimagined as a fantasy heist film built around its maze-like level structure, and Berzerk recast as a claustrophobic robot-uprising thriller drawing on its original premise of a lone human navigating a maze of killer robots. Whether any of these fan pitches bear any resemblance to what Universal and Entertainment 360 eventually greenlight remains to be seen, but the sheer volume of creative speculation is itself a reminder of just how much cultural residue these decades-old games still carry, even among players who never experienced them on original hardware. Industry analysts covering the deal have been more measured in their assessments, noting that bundling ten separate IPs into a single agreement gives Universal considerable flexibility to develop whichever concept tests best with audiences, rather than committing upfront to a single high-risk adaptation. That structure mirrors approaches other studios have taken when negotiating broad, multi-property licensing deals, allowing a distributor to explore several creative directions in parallel before deciding where to commit its heaviest marketing and production resources. The Business Logic Behind the Deal From a pure business standpoint, the appeal for Atari is fairly straightforward. Licensing revenue from film adaptations requires little ongoing investment from the games side of the business, while potentially reintroducing decades-old brand names to audiences who might otherwise have no reason to encounter them. A successful film, even a modestly performing one, tends to spike interest in the underlying game, something publishers of properties like Sonic the Hedgehog and the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise have already demonstrated repeatedly in recent years. For Atari, whose modern game releases skew heavily toward remasters, retro compilations, and nostalgia-driven hardware, a wave of renewed cultural attention from a film franchise could meaningfully support those existing product lines without requiring any new game development at all. Universal, meanwhile, gains a large bundle of instantly recognizable, decades-old brand names at a moment when studios across Hollywood are increasingly hunting for pre-existing intellectual property with built-in audience recognition, reducing some of the marketing risk associated with an entirely original film concept. Whether any single title from this list can carry a full theatrical release on brand recognition alone is very much an open question, but the deal at minimum guarantees Universal a deep bench of options to develop from over the coming years. The Full List of Properties Involved Asteroids Adventure Berzerk Breakout Centipede Crystal Castles Millipede Missile Command Pong Yars’ Revenge Homizel will continue tracking this story as casting news, directors, and the first confirmed title begin to emerge from what may be one of the more unusual development slates in modern Hollywood history. Post navigation Anbernic Trims the Fat: The RG SP Reimagines the Stickless Retro Clamshell Tomb Raider: Catalyst Slips to 2028 as Amazon Games Takes Its Time With the Reboot
