Dan Houser, the longtime writer and producer of the Grand Theft Auto series, has revealed why a movie adaptation of the series has never come about. For over two decades, Houser worked at Rockstar Games as one of the primary figures behind Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption before eventually leaving the studio in 2020. And while Houser is said to have fielded plenty of pitches for adaptations of GTA and RDR over the years, he never saw the value in greenlighting such projects.
Speaking to The Ankler, Houser said that those at Rockstar met with various executives about adapting Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption into either movies or TV shows. Houser explained that this often led to “awkward dates” between the parties where executives naturally assumed that Rockstar would be interested in such an endeavor. For Houser and the other members of Rockstar, though, they found the idea to be too risky given the value of the franchises that they owned. With how poor many video game movies and shows used to be, as well, Houser believed that these adaptations would potentially do more harm than good.
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“They thought we’d be blinded by the lights and that just wasn’t the case,” Houser said. “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. […] It’s a different time now.”
As Houser notes, it has been a much different time in recent years when it comes to various gaming adaptations. Films like The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Sonic the Hedgehog have been huge successes at the box office while TV shows such as The Last of Us and Fallout have found a ton of acclaim. As a result, perhaps Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption could make the jump to the big screen before too long.
Even if this does come to be, though, Houser seemingly wouldn’t be involved as he’s now the creative director at Absurd Ventures, a studio dedicated to telling stories across various mediums outside of just gaming. On Rockstar’s end, the studio is surely hyper-focused on releasing Grand Theft Auto VI, which is finally slated to launch in fall 2025 across PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
[H/T GI.biz]
