Overstock’s tZero to tokenize major movie biopic on Atari founder

By Adriana Hamacher

Nolan Bushnell went from repairing broken pinball machines to launching the videogame manufacturer Atari in the 1970s. Now, as a tribute to his pioneering spirit, the producers of a biopic on his life, “Atari: Fistful of Quarters,” are taking a unique approach and tokenizing the enterprise. 

tZero, a subsidiary of online retail platform Overstock, will develop “Bushnell” tokens, on behalf of film production and financing company Vision Tree, it announced today. The movie is being co-produced with Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company, Appian W.

Token holders will receive shares of movie earnings, assist in choosing the movie cast and vote on its trailer.

Vision Tree said, in March 2018, that it planned to raise as much as $40 million with the sale of the Bushnell token.

“While the film has received offers from conventional and studio-sourced financing, we have elected cryptocurrency funding to accelerate the filmmaking path in a whole new way,” producer J.D. Seraphine told Variety. “This open approach is also more in the DNA and the same spirit of Atari.”

In a press release, Overstock said that this was the first time that a major motion picture had been tokenized. The idea had been in the pipeline for some time.

“We have been looking for the team to crack the code for Hollywood and bring much needed transparency and accountability to an industry that has been historically resistant to change,” said Patrick M. Byrne, CEO of Overstock. “This is an extremely impressive team and we are thrilled to bring the tZERO tech stack to the movie industry.”

The project is not the only one focused on the $136 billion movie industry. FilmCoin, an initiative to allow film-makers to tokenize their productions premiered its first tokenized movie at the Sundance Film Festival in January. 

Meanwhile, there’s a nice job going at Decentralized Pictures, a distributed blockchain platform focused on “incentivized creative participation” and owned by American Zoetrope, which was founded by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas. It’s looking for a Community Manager, and you don’t need a token to apply.

Recommended News