Michael Gwilliam
Rockstar Games
Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser has revealed why the company decided against signing off on GTA and Red Dead Redemption films.
GTA and Red Dead Redemption are two of the biggest IPs in all of gaming, so the fact that there haven’t been movies made about them may be a bit of a shocker considering how many video game adaptations there have been.
Although Houser left Rockstar in 2020 and has since founded a new company, Absurd Ventures, he helped create some of the studio’s biggest hits when he served as head writer.
Speaking with The Ankler, Houser explained how he had received calls about Hollywood adapting GTA or Red Dead into a TV or movie project, but his answer to execs was always a resounding “no.”
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“After a few awkward dates, we’d ask [the executives], why would we do this?” he recalled.
Rockstar Games' co-founder Dan Houser gives a rare interview for the first time since leaving in 2020.
He reveals there were "numerous discussions" about making a Red Dead Redemption or GTA movie, but the idea always fell short due to risks and economics. pic.twitter.com/c2C2yDwQPB
— Ben (@videotechuk_) June 27, 2024
While the execs believed Rockstar would be on board just due to the fact their work could become a movie, the studio’s co-founder was concerned about letting others touch his creations without giving him creative control.
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“And we’d be like, ‘no, what you’ve described is you making a movie and us having no control and taking a huge risk that we’re going to end up paying for with something that belongs to us,’” he said.
“They thought we’d be blinded by the lights and that just wasn’t the case,” he added. “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.”
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Although there have been many high-quality adaptations of games since with The Last of Us and The Super Mario Bros Movie being well-received by critics and fans, Rockstar has yet to sign off on any films of their own.
They may not even need to with what they have planned for the future and the direction they’re pushing the gaming medium. GTA 6 is promising to “set entertainment benchmarks” with its planned release for Fall 2025.
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