Given that
Grand Theft Auto is one of the biggest franchises in the world, it comes as a surprise that it hasn't ventured beyond the realm of video games. Other franchises have been adapted into movies — albeit bad ones — so, why not
Grand Theft Auto? Well,
The Wrap recently put that question to the CEO of Take-Two Interactive (the parent company of Rockstar Games).
First of all, Strauss Zelnick and the site dicussed video game movies in general. The pair came to the conclusion that, while movies being adapted into video games has proven to be a fruitful endeavor, the same can't be said for video games being turned into movies. The conversation then shifted into talking specifically about the possibility of a
Grand Theft Auto movie.
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 it the way we wanted. And that would mean we’d need to finance that motion picture. While we have the balance sheet to do it, we don’t have the corporate expertise to do it. Only a handful of people inside Take-Two have ever worked in that business. I’m one of them. But that’s not what we do for a living.
Zelnick explained that Take-Two would want to offload the incredibly popular franchise to another studio. Instead, they'd want to make it themselves in order to ensure that it's as they would want it to be. However, while they can certainly afford to put the cogs in motion, they don't have masses of manpower and knowledge of the film industry.
“You have the most valuable intellectual property ever created by mankind: Grand Theft Auto," said the CEO of Take-Two.
"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 that?”