In the past, fans have seen many video game franchises getting adapted into a TV show or movie. These expansions are often ways to capitalize through these franchises and that’s exactly what rapper Eminem tried to do with the Grand Theft Auto video game series. During his prime years, the rapper was reportedly keen on making a movie based on the franchise with director Tony Scott after the release of Grand Theft Auto III.
Kirk Ewing, a popular name in the gaming industry, explained in a podcast how Eminem was ready to invest in this idea in the mid-2000s. However, the co-creator of the GTA series, Sam Houser, rejected the idea. After all these years, there hasn’t been much information about a GTA movie but Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Take-Two Interactive, explained in 2019 that they could create a movie based on the franchise only if they have complete control.
Eminem wanted to create a movie based on the Grand Theft Auto franchise
During his appearance on Bugzy Malone’s Grandest Game podcast, Kirk Ewing, a well-known gamer, revealed that he was asked if he wanted to work with rapper Eminem in a movie based on the Grand Theft Auto franchise,
“I remember taking a call at about 4 am from one of the producers in LA with an offer to make a film, and he said: ‘Kirk, we’ve got Eminem to star, and it’s a Tony Scott film, five million on the nose, are you interested?'”
As per Ewing, Eminem loved Grand Theft Auto III so much that he decided to create a movie based on it with director Tony Scott. However, the co-creator of GTA, Sam Houser, wasn’t interested at all.
In a 2013 interview with Empire, Houser made it clear that it is not about the money as they have received many big offers in the past. It was just that they couldn’t risk the franchise by allowing someone to create a movie based on it.
Grand Theft Auto movie will only happen if this criteria is fulfilled
It’s not like Rockstar Games is completely against the idea of making a movie on the video game series as they would love to do it if they get the creative freedom and complete control. Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Take-Two Interactive, told The Wrap in 2019,
“Part of it is, if we were to do something like that, we’d want to have complete creative control to make sure we expressed [GTA] in the way we wanted – and that would mean we’d need to finance that motion picture – You have the most valuable intellectual property ever created by mankind: ‘Grand Theft Auto.’ We wholly own and control it. Are we really going to let go of that and hope that someone – no matter how talented they are – will do a really good job with it?”
A decade after its release, GTA V has generated close to $8 billion and a movie based on this franchise would certainly be very profitable but as Houser said, it is not about the money. Rockstar Games is currently more focused on meeting the deadline for the release of their next GTA game, Grand Theft Auto 6, so a movie may not happen until 2026.
