In a recent interview, Dan Houser, co-founder of the famous Rockstar studio, discusses Hollywood’s multiple attempts to convince the studio to adapt its fabulous licenses into series and cinema.
When we are the creator of one of the greatest licenses in the history of video games, which has largely become a cultural phenomenon over the years, deeply irrigated by the influence of cinema and series too, we are not exactly illegitimate to express oneself on the subject. Dan Houser was one of the co-founders of the Rockstar studio, the father and head writer of Grand Theft Auto, aka GTA.
The GTA license, one of the most profitable of all time, is used to records. When it was released eleven years ago, GTA V shattered the record for the fastest-selling cultural product in 24 hours, raising more than 815 million dollars and selling more than 11 million copies on the day of its release. With 190 million copies, the license is the second best-selling of all time, behind Minecraft. And all this was before the upcoming arrival of GTA VI, made official last December.
“They thought we would be blinded by the lights of Hollywood”
Having left Rockstar in February 2020, Dan Houser has gone to found a new structure, called Absurd Ventures, which will keep a foot in video games, but not only. In a long interview given to the site The AnklerDan Houser discusses Hollywood’s many attempts to woo the studio, to turn their golden goose into a movie or TV series. Not just GTA, by the way, this also concerns the house’s other fabulous license, the western Red Dead Redemption and its sequel.
“After several bizarre meetings, we asked the executives [des studios] : “Why would we do that?” Their response: “Because you can make a movie about it.” And we were like, “No, what you just described is YOU making the movie, while we have no control, taking a huge risk that we’ll end up paying for with something that belongs to us.”
Rockstar Games
Niko Bellic, the hero of GTA IV.
He adds : “They thought we would be blinded by the lights of Hollywood and that just wasn’t the case. We had what we considered to be multi-billion dollar intellectual property, and the economics never made sense .Risk never made sense at that time, it felt like games were producing bad quality movies.” Hence Rockstar’s veto of the idea of a GTA film directed by Tony Scott with Eminem in the title role.
A pretty fair observation from Dan Houser. This state of affairs lasted a long time. This is no longer exactly the case today. He also adds a “times are different now.” A way of emphasizing that the alchemy can work today, with very big successes like the adaptation of Super Mario Bros, or the series The Last of Us and Fallout. The fact remains that, in fact, the notoriety of a license like GTA is so overwhelming that it absolutely has no need to be wrung out in a medium other than video games.
