Leonardo DiCaprio will head into the video game industry — and the '70s — in 'Atari'.

The actor is to produce and star in the biopic about Nolan Bushnell, the founder of the legendary American games company that created early arcade hits like 'Pong'.

The engineering student started out repairing broken pinball machines before co-founding Atari Corp. in 1972 on $500. Early employees included Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak but within six years he sold the company for $28-million after inventing 'Pong' and the Atari 2600 game console.

In 1977 he went on to establish the popular US chain of restaurant amusement arcades Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatres, which now has 200 branches.

The man, who was a millionaire by the age of 39, turned down several requests to have his life turned into a film before agreeing to the DiCaprio project.

The 33-year-old 'Titanic' actor has a soft spot for telling real-life stories, previously having portrayed the likes of entrepreneur Howard Hughes ('The Aviator'), counterfeiter Frank Abagnale Jr. ('Catch Me If You Can') and poet Jim Carroll ('The Basketball Diaries').

He's also developing a film on Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond.

The 65-year-old Bushnell, who lives in Los Angeles and has eight children, has had a number of ups and downs during his career.

"The subtle generational cues that make one thing cool and another uncool aren't always obvious to a parent. My children are my dinner-table sounding board. I've come up with some wonderful ideas that they universally dismissed as 'lame'," he told Wired in 2005.