Ben-DutkaIt's actually quite surprising that we haven't seen a movie adaptation of the immensely popular Grand Theft Auto video game franchise.
In the past, publisher Take-Two Interactive has expressed its reservations at greenlighting a GTA movie and it appears they haven't changed their stance. Speaking during this week's BMO Capital Conference (as cited by GameSpot ), Take-Two president Karl Slatoff said that while the licensing rights for a film would be lucrative, he's not sure it's worth the risk.
"If you’re going to invest in a movie–you can make a lot of money on movies–but as a licensor, you’ve got to look at what the success rate is, what the movie has to do for you to generate substantial economics that are worth taking the risk.
Slatoff added that film and TV representatives have demonstrated interest in the GTA series, along with other Rockstar IPs, but Take-Two is wary of what a badly reviewed movie could do to an otherwise successful game franchise. They don't, however, dismiss offers.
"So if it’s a bad movie, does that hurt your franchise or not? So there is always a balance that has to be struck there. But obviously, we consider those inbound requests. We take those inbound requests. So it’s something we consider at this point, but again it's not core to what we do."
Yeah, we say it's unnecessary. The movie is almost guaranteed to suck and even if it doesn't, GTA doesn't really need the help. Besides, we don't need to give the media more excuses to blame GTA for all the evils of the world.
I'd love to see a Vice City gta movie. All the 80's songs and stuff. Be good.
Scarface
While bad movies don't seem to affect games, I'd still like to see a barrage of game to movie adaptations that are done properly.
But so far nobody is willing to gamify a movie; they only want to movify a game, which is what always kills it.
It's cause it's so much easier to "movify" a game – the games are usually just action scenes with a backdrop story as thin as a sheet of graphene.
It's very hard to gamify anything else than certain action scenes from a movie – and even that can prove to be very difficult unless the scenes are very linear. That's the problem with games built around a movie – they feel like empty shells compared to the movie counterpart.
Last edited by Beamboom on 12/13/2013 7:08:34 AM
That's if you need lots of fancy camera angles, excessive dialogue, throw-away characters, and such.
I happen to think you could make an amazing minimalist movie just following a nameless hero in a twisted journey through Rapture. All you'd need is the right atmosphere, a handful of tense battles, and interesting people on the radio.
Yes but now you talk about movifying a game and not gamifying a movie – unless I totally misunderstood your terms: "Movifying a game" is making a movie out of a game right?
What I say is hard is to take a movie and make a game out of it. It's hard cause all a game can do is essentially show action scenes and very physical events. A movie consist of so much more than that. Communication between the characters – especially of non-verbal nature – is not easy to do other than to use movie clips aka cut scenes.
So yeah, a story that takes place in Rapture would be fantastic to see, and should be fully doable if you find the right director and a motivated writer.
I'd LOVE to see such a movie done…!
As good as the storytelling in the GTA games has gotten, it would still only translate to a decent movie. The appeal of the GTA series is giving the player a living, breathing world to inhabit and explore. That would be completely lost in a movie adaptation. We've already got a bunch of crime movies, so let's leave GTA as a game, thank you very much.
yup as much as it could make alot of profit potentially it's still risky if it goes badly how the fans of the GTA games would reacted so yeah i get that they don't want to make a GTA movie.
happy gaming =)
It'd be interesting to see GTA's satire cross onto the silver screen, but I'm happy enough without a film adaptation. I mean… the games aren't that much different from most crime/heist flicks aside from the grander scope that 40+ hours and a massive explorable city offer.
one game that would adapt to movies perfectly.
whether it turns out a decent movie though is another story.
just keep mr boom boom bay at least 1000 light years away from it at all times!