With the amount of comic books, movies and other random spin-offs coming out of videogames these days, it has almost become odd for a major game not to be franchised out into a billion other entertainment mediums. We’re not even sure if EA, Activision and Ubisoft can be considered solely game developers anymore since they’ve got their fingers in so many different mediums. It’s great for gamers when the end results are good, but in the case of movies, they almost never are. This is one of the many reasons we will most likely not be seeing a Grand Theft Auto movie.
Speaking with the Los Angeles Times, Dan Houser, the vice president of creative development at Rockstar Games, said, “We don’t believe that the Grand Theft Auto games, which are massive in scope and structurally complex, can be adequately compressed into a two-hour movie.
“It seems obvious to us that maintaining the long-term integrity of any entertainment property has been dependent on not making substandard spin-off products to people whose primary interest is making a quick buck. If we ever decide to do a film, it will be because we have resolved our creative doubts, and while retaining enough control to ensure that if the movie is terrible, at least we will know we ruined the property ourselves.”
Pretty much my thoughts exactly. A GTA movie wouldn’t be anything special at all considering that the game’s plots, which pay plenty of homage to crime films, are mostly about rising up in the crime world — and that has been done to death in film. It’s the freedom of the open world that makes GTA GTA, and taking that away would make it something else.
[Via GTA4.net]
