Sony Pictures and producer Scott Rudin have acquired Blake J. Harris’ upcoming book “Console Wars” and tapped Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg to co-write and direct the behind-the-scenes tale of Nintendo’s battle with upstart video game maker Sega, the book’s U.K. publisher announced Monday.
Atlantic Books will publish the business thriller “Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo and the Battle That Defined a Generation” in August.
Sega was a small, scrappy company led by an unlikely visionary in Tom Kalinske when it took on gaming juggernaut Nintendo and revolutionized the video game industry.
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Harris draws on hundreds of interviews to present the first full account of this titanic corporate battle, which transformed computer games into a global industry that recorded sales of $50 billion last year, making it a bigger business than the film and music industries combined.
As a teenager, it was fascinating to watch Nintendo and Sega try to one-up each other, with Sonic the Hedgehog introduced as a formidable rival to beloved sibling plumbers Mario and Luigi. Rogen and Goldberg grew up witnessing the battle first-hand, and “Console Wars” has the potential to be fascinating should they find the right actor to play Kalinske.
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Rudin will produce with Rogen and Goldberg, while Harris will executive produce and co-direct a documentary on the same subject.
“Blake Harris’s amazing book has all the narrative drama of the work of Michael Lewis and Ben Mezrich. It should appeal to gamers and non-gamers alike,” said Toby Mundy, publisher at Atlantic Books, which acquired U.K. and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) from Carolyn Bodkin at HarperCollins U.S.