Xbox Live T.V. Series: E.T. Atari Video Game Dump Chronicled in First Show
Microsoft's Xbox Entertainment Studios is beginning production on its first Xbox television series. Not surprisingly, the show will be about a video game. More surprising perhaps, is that this video game became popular not because it had great graphics but because it made a great amount of garbage.
The first Xbox television series will be a documentary about the E.T. the Extraterrestrial video game that notoriously filled trash dumps in 1983 after failing to sell. Back then, Atari allegedly buried millions of cartridges of the video game in Alamogordo, Mexico. The site will be excavated for the show.
Lightbox, the child of producer Simon Chinn (Searching for Sugar Man, Man on Wire) and Johnathan Chiinn (30 Days, American High), will produce the series. Microsoft Entertainment Studios will co-produce, while Zak Penn, story writer of The Avengers, is slated to direct.
"When Simon and Jonathan Chinn approached me about this story, I knew it would be something important and fascinating," Penn said in a statement. "I wasn't expecting to be handed the opportunity to uncover one of the most controversial mysteries of gaming lore."
Filming of the series will begin next month. It is scheduled to become available via Xbox 360 and Xbox One in 2014.
In 2012, Nancy Tellem, former CBS Network Television Entertainment Group president, joined Microsoft to head Xbox Entertainment Studios.
"Jonathan and Simon Chinn are the perfect team to spearhead this series for Xbox. They are consummate story tellers and they plan to match their creative sensibility with the best talent in the industry," Tellem said. "These stories will expose how the digital revolution created a global democracy of information, entertainment and commerce and how it impacts our lives every day."
Other proposed Xbox TV series include a series based on Halo to be executive produced by Steven Spielberg and a show about the unveiling of the Xbox One.