Hollywood Wants to Turn Pong Into a Movie - No, Really

So here's a sentence I never expected to type: there's a Pong movie in the works.

Atari has signed a deal with Universal Pictures (and a production outfit called Entertainment 360) that gives the studio the option to make up to ten films based on its dusty back catalogue. We're talking Pong, Breakout, Asteroids, Adventure, Berzerk, Centipede, Crystal Castles, Millipede, Missile Command and Yars' Revenge. The stated goal, per the reports, is "big-scale action-adventure" cinema. From games that are, in most cases, older than the people who'll be selling the popcorn.

Let that sink in. Pong is two paddles and a bouncing dot. Breakout is you, a bat, and a wall of bricks. There's no plot here to adapt - there's barely a noun. Whatever ends up on screen will have almost nothing to do with the actual game beyond the logo on the poster.

We've seen this movie before

Hollywood's love affair with game IP isn't new, and it's been wildly hit-and-miss. For every Super Mario Bros. that prints money, or a Last of Us that actually respects its source, there's a long graveyard of adaptations nobody asked for. The difference here is that most of these Atari titles don't even have "source material" in any meaningful sense. They're brands, not stories. Universal is basically buying nostalgia and a handful of recognisable names, then building whatever it wants around them.

And that's the part worth being honest about: this is a licensing play, not a creative one. Ten films is an "option," not a promise - studios sign these umbrella deals all the time and then quietly make one, or none.

Still, there's something a little charming about it too. For anyone who grew up feeding coins into arcade cabinets - and plenty of people here did, well into the 90s - these names carry real weight. Missile Command and Centipede were the blockbusters of their day. If a film sends even a few teenagers down a rabbit hole to discover where all this started, fine by me.

I just wouldn't hold my breath for a Pong Cinematic Universe. Wake me up when there's an actual trailer - and even then, I'm bringing my skepticism into the theatre with me.

Image: PattayaPatrol / CC BY-SA 4.0, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DFC_0797_Close-up_of_a_row_of_retro_arcade_game_joysticks_glowing_with_neon_blue_and_pink_lights.jpg