Rockstar co-founder on the chances of a Grand Theft Auto movie or TV series

There’s just a week to go before the release of one of this generation’s most anticipated video games as Rockstar unleashes Grand Theft Auto V, and with Hollywood once more casting its eye towards triple-A gaming titles (see Assassin’s Creed, Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, World of Warcraft etc.) you’d have to imagine that a GTA movie would be high on any studio’s wishlist. Speaking to The Guardian, Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser has confirmed as much, although he’s also went on to state that the developer values its creative freedom too much to hand its prize asset over to Hollywood:

“We’ve been offered [a movie deal], many times, and it’s never appealed. The money’s never been close to be worth risking one’s crown jewels. Our small dabblings with Hollywood have always left us running back to games. The freedom we have to do what we want creatively is of enormous value. The second you go near Hollywood, people seem willing, or have been forced, to lose a lot of that control. That sort of amorphous ‘that won’t test well’ attitude is exactly how we don’t work. We’ve always tried to think of stuff that’s innovative and new, and to go into a world where that’s not encouraged would be horrible.”

Having ruled out a Grand Theft Auto movie, Hauser then explained that television would be a better medium for an adaptation of the bestselling video game series, but again, it seems highly unlikely: “It’s much easier to imagine GTA as a TV series, as the form is closer, but I still think we’d be losing too much to ever actually do it. We’ve got this big open-world experience that’s 100 hours long, and that gives players control over what they do, what they see, and how they see it. A world where you can do everything from rob a bank to take a yoga lesson to watch TV, all in your own time. How do you condense that into a two-hour or 12-hour experience where you take away the main things: player agency and freedom? We love games and we think we’ve got something to say in games, and that games have plenty to say. So shouldn’t we just continue doing that?”

Originally published September 10, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.