Warner and Atari were so confident that they would have the biggest game of 1982, they ended up paying somewhere in the region of $20-25 million dollars for the license. They then assigned the project to Howard Scott Warshaw (who programmed Yars' Revenge amongst other games for Atari), and gave him a strict deadline of five and a half weeks to make the game in time for the 1982 holiday season. This was because the game adaptation rights were only secured by Atari in late July, weeks after the film's release, and development had to be completed by September to allow for the time needed to manufacture and distribute cartridges in time for the Holiday season. Warshaw developed most of the game by himself, with about 1.5K of graphics provided by Jerome Domurat. Atari felt confident that the game would sell well based off of the name recognition alone. They produced 5 million copies of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (more games than there were Atari 2600 consoles in homes), and only managed to sell 1-2 million.