Don't Hold Your Breath For A GRAND THEFT AUTO Movie

The last Grand Theft Auto video game, GTA IV was released in 2008 and grossed over $500 million USD…in its first week of release! Video game movies very well could be the next comic book movies so it's unsurprising that a few Hollywood studios have approached Rockstar about a Grand Theft Auto movie. However, Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser states they're not really interested, “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. Our small dabblings with Hollywood have always left us running back to games.” Houser's concerns are understandable as the current track record for video game adaptations is anything but stellar. However, considering the number of video game adaptations in the works including Assassin's Creed, World of Warcraft, Splinter Cell and more, someone will eventually crack the code. Yet Houser seems very leery of the Hollywood process. ”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. That sort of amorphous ‘that won’t test well’ attitude is exactly how we don’t work. We’ve always tried to think of stuff that’s innovative and new, and to go into a world where that’s not encouraged would be horrible,” muses Houser.

Houser doesn't appear keen on a Grand Theft Auto movie at all but what about television? “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 ,” said Houser. He continued, “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? We love games and we think we’ve got something to say in games, and that games have plenty to say. So shouldn’t we just continue doing that?”

Grand Theft Auto V will be released on the Xbox 360 and PS3 on September 17, 2013.



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