Rockstar co-founder and former head writer Dan Houser recently explained why Grand Theft Auto never made the jump to the silver screen. According to Houser, the studio simply never viewed it as a smart financial move.
In an interview with The Ankler (via GamesIndustry.biz), Houser revealed that multiple conversations were held about potentially turning various Rockstar games into movies. After a few meetings with higher-ups, Houser asked executives, “Why would we do this?” This would often prompt executives to explain that it would be a chance for the studio to make a live-action movie. Houser went on to explain why doing this would be a bad idea:
“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,” Houser said. “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.”
This aligns with what Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick has said about not wanting to hand over creative control to another company. If a GTA movie were to happen, Take-Two would want to fund it to ensure it would have full control. Another reason Take-Two has been “very selective and very careful” is that if the movie bombs, it runs the risk of potentially hurting the IP as a whole.
That being said, that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been interest in it. Various actors such as Elijah Woods and even Jack Black have shared similar statements about how shocking it is that GTA hasn’t made the jump to live-action yet.
For more GTA-related news, check out our story, which details everything we know about GTA 6.
