Rockstar Games Isn’t Impressed By GTA Movie Proposals

Grand Theft Auto The Movie – it would have to be one heck of a film to live up to the standard set by the video games and that’s even if Rockstar Games would approve of the idea. Rockstar Games co-founder and vice president of creativity Dan Houser told The Guardian in an interview that a Grand Theft Auto film/movie just doesn’t appeal to them. He says that Rockstar Games have been offered such a proposal numerous times and they’ve turned them all down.

“We’ve been offered, many times, and it’s never appealed, The money’s never been close to be worth risking one’s crown jewels.”

He says the creativity you can exercise over video games is much higher than what you can do in Hollywood. As a result they are unlikely to ever surrender this creativity to meet the demands and expectations of Hollywood.

“Our small dabblings with Hollywood have always left us running back to games. The freedom we have to do what we want creatively is of enormous value. The second you go near Hollywood, people seem willing, or have been forced, to lose a lot of that control.”

If GTA ever were to be put into a cinematic format Houser believes that GTA as a TV series would be much better but even then it is still unlikely.

“It’s much easier to imagine GTA as a TV series, as the form is closer, but I still think we’d be losing too much to ever actually do it…We’ve got this big open-world experience that’s 100 hours long, and that gives players control over what they do, what they see, and how they see it. A world where you can do everything from rob a bank to take a yoga lesson to watch TV, all in your own time. How do you condense that into a two-hour or 12-hour experience where you take away the main things: player agency and freedom?”

Image courtesy of Rockstar Games