Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has shut down speculation on any forthcoming Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption movies, but in a roundabout way.
Now, we should point out that Take-Two have two licensed projects on the way. Netflix recently previewed their upcoming BioShock movie. Take-Two is also involved in the upcoming Borderlands movie, alongside Gearbox Software, which is now owned by Embracer, and film company Lionsgate. Avi Arad and Erik Feig are producing the Borderlands film, alongside Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford, and Take-Two’s Zelnick.
In an interview with NME, Zelnick shared his deeper thoughts about making movie adaptations of his company’s video games.
First things first, he does affirm his positive sentiments for the two approved upcoming projects:
“We’re excited about [the Borderlands and BioShock films] and selectively we could see licensing in the future when there’s a creative imperative and an economic opportunity.”
But then, Zelnick points out his wariness about bringing all of Take-Two’s properties over to the film business:
“We’re not going to bet this company’s future or the value of our intellectual property based on someone else’s execution in another area of the entertainment business.
So, we’ll continue to be very selective indeed. Even if we did take a broad-based approach in the absence of investing ourselves, the economic opportunity in the context of the much greater economic opportunity for our core business is limited.”
What you may not know is how uniquely qualified Zelnick is to assess both the video game and movie / show industries. He worked at Columbia Pictures Television, eventually becoming its president, from 1983 to 1988. (He left a year before Sony acquired Columbia.) He then spent four years at Twentieth-Century Fox, as its president and CEO.
Zelnick definitely recognizes that there would be so much money on the table if Take-Two produced either a Red Dead Redemption or Grand Theft Auto movie. Both cowboy movies and crime movies are considered cult genres; but with the proper production company and director, they can become some of the most critically acclaimed films and series. One doesn’t need to look far to find such movies and shows, like The Sopranos, The Searchers, Chinatown, True Grit, Goodfellas, and Unforgiven.
But what Zelnick is wary of is not that video games can’t be made into good or popular movies or shows. It’s that he doesn’t trust the big Hollywood production companies right now to make those movies or shows good.
Zelnick is involving himself directly with the Bioshock and Borderlands movies. If the opportunity to make Red Dead Redemption or Grand Theft Auto movies came up, that would be favorable in Zelnick’s eyes, he would definitely want to be involved in the same way as well. So he definitely wouldn’t be looking at such projects right now, at least not until these two pending projects are finished and proven successes.
