Chris Roberts founded Ascendant Pictures in early 2003 and within a short period, established himself and the company as a prominent force in the world of independent film production and finance. He earned an Executive Producer credit on The Punisher in 2004, produced The Big White, Lord Of War, and Lucky Number Slevin, and served as Executive Producer on The Jacket and Ask The Dust.
Prior to founding Ascendant, Roberts was the Chairman and CEO of Digital Anvil (DA),a game development and digital effects company he founded in 1996 with funding from Microsoft and Advanced Micro Devices. He guided DA's growth to annual revenues of $14 million before releasing many of its games in development. Roberts' innovations revolutionized the gaming industry, perfecting the use of 35mm film as narrative in interactive game titles and producing the first interactive entertainment company to produce a game title, Wing Commander, into a $25 million feature film.
DA and its video game titles won numerous gaming awards, and the company became a digital effects powerhouse, creating all the digital effects for the Wing Commander movie and contributing to the digital effects for several other films, including Spy Kids. In 2000, Roberts sold DA to Microsoft, which remains a successful subsidiary and content provider for the XBox.
In 1987, Roberts joined Origin Systems, Inc. (OSI),which was later acquired by Electronic Arts (EA) in 1992 for $30 million. He was instrumental in OSI's growth from a company with $4 million in annual revenues to a company with annual revenues of $50 million. In 1990, Roberts developed Wing Commander, which set a new standard in PC games and evolved into a franchise series of game titles, all developed and produced by Roberts.
Roberts' gaming career began at the age of 14, when he sold his first computer game. By the age of 20, he had developed three #1 hits in his native U.K.: Match Day, Wiz Adore, and Stryker's Run.