EXCLUSIVE: Dan Cutforth & Jane Lipsitz, the Emmy and IDA Award-winning filmmakers from Alfred Street Industries, have been tapped to direct and produce a restricted docuseries on the enduring client model and interactive leisure producer, Atari.
The sequence, tentatively titled Game Changers: The Story of Atari, will current Atari’s definitive historical past and anticipated future. Founded in 1972, Atari is an arcade sport pioneer additionally chargeable for online game consoles just like the Atari 2600. Currently, the corporate owns and/or manages a portfolio of greater than 200 video games and franchises, together with world-renowned manufacturers like Asteroids, Centipede, Missile Command, Pong, and RollerCoaster Tycoon.
April 2021 marked the start of a brand new period for Atari, as Wade Rosen was named CEO, starting to work along with his group to reignite the legacy model, whereas remaining acutely aware of its distinctive place in online game historical past, media and popular culture. Under his path, Atari has returned to its roots in premium sport improvement and publishing, releasing new titles and bringing extra content material to PC, console, and streaming platforms.
“The story of Atari would seem almost unbelievable if the people who lived it weren’t still here to tell the tale,” mentioned Cutforth in an announcement to Deadline. “These maverick innovators survived everything from corporate malfeasance to Mafia death threats to create the household name games and ground breaking technology that launched and shaped the video game industry.”
Lipshitz added that their Atari sequence “is not just the epic 50 year saga of a legendary brand,” but in addition serves as “a fascinating and hilarious oral history of the video game industry and the Silicon Valley tech revolution.”
Nodding to Atari’s “rich, fifty-year history that fans continue to celebrate and explore,” Rosen added that the corporate is “looking forward to working with Alfred Street Industries to share our story with existing fans and bring new fans into our growing community.”
Cutforth and Lipsitz are the manufacturing group behind such hit unscripted sequence as Is It Cake? (Netflix), Project Runway (Bravo) and Project Greenlight (Max). Previously, the pair have additionally backed top-grossing live performance docs like Justin Bieber: Never Say Never and Okayaty Perry: Part of Me — each for Paramount — whereas premiering different documentary works on the SXSW, Sundance and Sundance London Film Festivals. The duo based Alfred Street Industries in 2019 and function co-CEOs.
Atari is repped by IAG; Cutforth & Lipsitz by WME.