Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser has spoken to Empire and explained why there's never been a Grand Theft Auto movie and probably never will be.
Houser admits that the developer has been approached about the prospects of a movie based on the mega-selling game series but has always declined.
"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. 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."
Explaing the decision against turning Grand Theft Auto into a movie Houser said it comes down to the difficulty in replicating player agency in a movie format. He adds that it would be much easier to envision a TV series based on the franchise.
"There's still plenty of kudos in doing a film, but you shouldn't ever do anything in your life for kudos. 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?"
He added the Rockstar enjoys working in games and given the massive success of the series to date there's no reason to divert too much attention away from gaming: "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?"
According to a report, Grand Theft Auto 5 is the most expensive game of all time with a combined marketing and development budget of $265 million. The game is set to be released on September 17th.
