Why GTA never got a movie or series? Former Rockstar leader explains

GTA is one of the most classic franchises in the industry and helped to consolidate open-world games in video games. The plot of each of the titles could easily serve as the outline for a big Hollywood action movie, but there is a reason why this never happened — and the co-founder of Rockstar himself explains why.

In an extensive interview with The AnklerRockstar co-founder and former leader Dan Houser discussed the state of Hollywood and his new company’s efforts to develop new intellectual properties that could eventually be turned into blockbuster films and games.

Rockstar had “numerous discussions” to turn GTA or Red Dead Redemption into a movie

In the conversation, Houser states that there have been numerous discussions with executives about transforming Rockstar games, such as GTA e Red Dead Redemptionin films. But the North American studio was not convinced to hand over these rights.

“We would say, ‘No, what you’re describing is that you’re making a movie and we have no control and we’re taking a huge risk that we’re going to end up paying for it with something that belongs to us,'” the executive explained. “They thought we’d be blinded by the lights, but we weren’t.”

Dan Houser had “countless discussions” about turning GTA into a movie when he was at Rockstar.Fonte:  Eurogamer

“We had what we considered to be a multibillion-dollar intellectual property and the economics never made sense. The risk never made sense. Back then, the perception was that games made low-quality movies,” he said. “Now is a different time.”

Adaptations of major video game franchises to the big screen are on the rise

Houser had numerous discussions to transform GTA or Red Dead Redemption in film at a time when these film adaptations lacked quality. Some examples from the 2000s include the films in the franchise Resident Evil directed by Paul Anderson, as well as DOOM — starring The Rock.

The Last of Us series is a good example of a successful adaptation.Source: HBO

Nowadays, the conversation is different. It seems that Hollywood is finally doing the right thing and has become aware of what constitutes a good adaptation of video games for the big screen. Of course, we also have great examples, such as the series of The Last of Us from HBO, the films of Sonic e Mario and even Arcaneof League of Legends.

So, in fact, this may be an opportune time to transform GTA or Red Dead Redemption in movies. Have you ever imagined this happening? Comment your opinion on the social networks Voxel!