Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser has explained why Rockstar Games never produced a Grand Theft Auto film based on the games.
In an interview on The Ankler, Dan revealed that Rockstar received multiple pitches for possible Grand Theft Auto projects from Hollywood, and they were all rejected. In Dan’s words:
“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.”
Aside from Grand Theft Auto, other Rockstar games that could have been viably adapted to films or shows include the Western Red Dead Redemption, the high school setting of Bully, the street racer Midnight Club, and the Eli Roth-like horrors of Manhunt. While there would clearly be a lot of potential money in making a Grand Theft Auto film, or a Red Dead Redemption film, it’s clear that all of their original IPs hold their influences close to the sleeve, and could have been fertile material for movies or shows.
Of course, a Grand Theft Auto film did get made, of a different kind. The 2015 film the Gamechangers starred Daniel Radcliffe as Dan’s brother Sam Houser, in a fictional depiction of the events in the 2000s when Sam and Dan’s Rockstar faced controversies over a lawsuit from conservative attorney Jack Thompson, as well as the fallout of the Hot Coffee mod controversy.
Dan is now more interested in working with Hollywood, but this time, he is doing so as head of a new company he made, called Absurd Ventures. Maybe Dan could pitch something similar to Grand Theft Auto to Hollywood now, but the question still remains about making a Grand Theft Auto film itself.
Looking at Rockstar’s parent company Take-Two Interactive, they had a Borderlands film brewing since 2015. That original pitch may have stayed in development for nearly a decade, but they were able to successfully take it to the finish line. The Borderlands film is releasing this August 9, 2024, with Gearbox and 2K listed among its producers.
Rockstar and 2K can move forward with a film or show adaptation of any of their properties, regardless of how the Borderlands film performs in this highly unpredictable market. What really matters her seems to be if they are interested in branching out at this time, and if they find a production whom they can trust. But since Nintendo, Naughty Dog, and Bethesda all found success in this field, why wouldn’t Rockstar take that risk? It would seem to me, personally, that crafting a single show to bring all the game narratives together like The Sopranos or Breaking Bad could be their best bet in getting Grand Theft Auto right.
