Rockstar reportedly turned down an offer of $5 million for the rights to make a GTA movie starring Eminem and directed by Top Gun’s Tony Scott, it’s been revealed, but the developer was “not interested.”
Speaking on the Bugzy Malone’s Grandest Game podcast for the BBC, industry veteran and friend of Rockstar founders Sam and Dan Houser, Kirk Ewing, has claimed that the brothers were “not interested” in an offer for a GTA tie-in movie around the time Grand Theft Auto 3 was launched.
Rockstar wasn’t “interested” in a GTA movie from Top Gun director Tony Scott
According to Ewing, the idea of a GTA tie-in movie had been spoken about by the Houser brothers around 2003 when GTA 3 launched on the PlayStation 2, which was the same time as Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP was killing it in the charts. As if the timing couldn’t have been any better, the rapper had just finished shooting 8 Mile, so he would have been in a great position to take on the project.
“I think at that point, it was still in Sam’s mind that it might be something that he wanted to do,” Kirk said on the podcast. After tracking Dan Houser to a hotel, the pair apparently stayed up late discussing the potential for a GTA movie, and at 4am, an LA producer called them with an offer for the rights to make the movie. “He said ‘Kirk, we’ve got Eminem to star, and it’s a Tony Scott film — $5 million on the nose. Are you interested?'” Ewing said. “I phoned up Sam and I said ‘Listen to this. They want Eminem in the Grand Theft Auto movie and Tony Scott to direct,’ and he said: ‘Not interested.'”
As far as Ewing is aware, that’s the last time Sam and Dan Houser discussed a movie tie-in. “They realised that the media franchise that they had was bigger than any movie that was going on at the time,” Kirk concluded.
Ewing was right — the Grand Theft Auto series has gone on to become one of the most profitable franchises in media, spawning a slew of sequels and spin-offs that have led to the world now waiting on any information about GTA 6. In Take-Two’s recent earnings call, the company’s CEO said that the recent GTA 6 leak won’t affect the game’s development, so we won’t need to wait any longer than the team needs until we can play it — not that we knew when it would launch anyway.
Naturally, Rockstar’s latest GTA title, Grand Theft Auto V is on our list sporting some of the best open-world Xbox games. Check out the list to see what other adventures you could be embarking on.
What do you think of this news? Would you have been interested in a GTA movie? Drop down below and let us know!
