GTA boss Dan Houser explains why a Grand Theft Auto movie never happened
Does a GTA movie make sense? (Roackstar Games)
Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser has revealed why a GTA movie never happened during his tenure, but admits that ‘it’s a different time now’.
Considering today’s trend of video games being made into popular TV shows and films, such as Fallout and The Super Mario Bros. Movie, one of the big ‘what ifs’ of the past is the possibility of making GTA into a movie.
It never happened, but now co-founder and former Rockstar boss Dan Houser has explained why GTA: The Movie never materialised, despite interest from Hollywood.
According to Houser, when he was contacted about making the iconic IP into a film, he turned the idea down, because Rockstar wouldn’t have had enough control.
‘After a few awkward dates, we’d ask [the executives], why would we do this?’ he said in a new interview.
What the executives shot was: ‘Because you get to make a movie.’
‘And we’d be like, no, what you’ve described is you making a movie and us having no control, and taking a huge risk that we’re going to end up paying for with something that belongs to us [sic],’ Houser told The Ankler.
Houser doesn’t go into much detail, so it’s unclear if it would have been an adaptation of a specific game or just the idea of GTA in general, although if it was the latter it’s hard to imagine how it would avoid coming across as just a random crime thriller.
‘They thought we’d be blinded by the lights and that just wasn’t the case.
‘We had what we considered to be multi-billion-dollar IP, and the economics never made sense. The risk never made sense. In those days, the perception was that games made poor-quality movies.’
Houser then conceded that, ‘It’s a different time now.’
Co-founder of Rockstar Dan Houser resigned in 2020 and started Absurd Ventures (GTA Wiki)
It really is a different time, as just recently it was confirmed that there’s another Uncharted film in the works and The Super Mario Bros. Movie is getting a sequel.
Recent years have also seen other video games adaptations come to the big screen, such as Detective Pikachu, Gran Turismo, Mortal Kombat, Sonic The Hedgehog, and Assassin’s Creed.
Although it’s TV shows such as Fallout and The Last Of Us which have enjoyed the most impact and the most critical acclaim.
Whether that will convince Rockstar to do an adaptation remains to be seen, but with GTA 6 coming out next year it’s not likely to be the first thing on their mind at the moment.
A Red Dead Redemption film could also be a possibility but, like GTA, it’s far more distinctive as a game than it would be a movie or show.
Maybe there’ll be a GTA 6 movie? (Rockstar Games)
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