Dan Houser explained why Rockstar never approved a Grand Theft Auto movie
Former Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser discussed potential adaptations of Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption in a recent interview. According to the top manager, the leadership repeatedly discussed the idea of making a movie, but each time the negotiations reached an impasse.
As the reason for the refusal, Houser cited major reputational risks. The company wasn't particularly interested in money, but if a bad movie was made based on the franchise, its image would suffer greatly.
“After a few awkward dates we’d ask, why would we do this? And we'd be like, no, what you've described is you making a movie and us having no control and taking a huge risk that we’re going to end up paying for with something that belongs to us.
They thought we’d be blinded by the lights and that just wasn't the case. We had what we considered to be multi-billion-dollar IP, and the economics never made sense. The risk never made sense. In those days, the perception was that games made poor-quality movies.”
Now the quality of game adaptations has noticeably improved — in recent years, we have seen many high-budget works, including series based on The Last of Us and Fallout.
After leaving Rockstar, Dan Houser founded the studio Absurd Ventures, which is working on an unannounced game and an audio series called A Better Paradise.
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