A Grand Theft Auto feature documentary is in the works and has already began production via UK company Salon Pictures and Breaking Habits director Rob Ryan, according to Screen Daily.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Titled The Billion Dollar Game, the project will be introduced to buyers at next month’s American Film Market. Meanwhile, filming for the project has already commenced, and will include both new interview footage, as well as archive footage.
Salon’s Annabel Wigoder and Nick Taussig have been tapped as producers, while Jan Pace and James Atherton from finance outfit Quickfire Films will step into the role of executive producers, as well as Cora Palfrey from Independent.
As Screen Daily notes, director Rob Ryan’s career includes multiple documentaries, as well as some commercials. His most recent project, Breaking Habits, was about a convent of weed farming nuns.
Further details on the project haven’t been disclosed, but from the sounds of it the documentary will detail the series’ rise to one of the most valuable IP across all of entertainment.
As you may know, this isn’t the first time more mainstream media has intersected with Grand Theft Auto and Rockstar Games. There was also the one-off BBC drama, The Gamechangers, which starred Daniel Radcliffe as Rockstar co-founder Sam Houser.
The programme depicted the story of the controversy caused by the crime video game series, including the various external attempts to half production of the games.
More specifically, it mostly centered around the legal feud between Sam Houser (Daniel Radcliffe) and attorney Jack Thompson (Bill Paxton) over GTA, and the debate around violent video games that engulfed it at the time, and still lingers in a lesser capacity to this day.
At the time of writing this, Rockstar hasn’t provided any official statement on the project. Of course, we will update this post if said statement or comment is provided.
The rise of Grand Theft Auto and Rockstar Games is certainly an interesting one, and given how secretive the latter tends to be, it isn’t the best documented story in video games. Thus, it could be interesting to see a more behind-the-scenes view of the games, its developer, and the key players as it shot to massive popularity.
