Take Two has commented on the main reason why we have not seen a Grand Theft Auto movie yet.
As reported by Gamespot, Take Two President Karl Slatoff explained at the BMO Capital conference the risks that might be involved in investing money and effort into a movie.
“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.
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.”
Slatoff makes a very valid point. Video game movies have always been critically and financially unsuccessful no matter how popular the video game license is. Not to mention big budget action movies don’t always do well at the box office. Perfect examples recently have been Disney’s John Carter and The Loner Ranger movies. Both movies cost $250 million each, but hardly made any money back at the box office.
Rockstar are already pretty successful making a lot of money making great games, do I don’t think the company needs to make a movie anyway. Still, it would be interesting to see what a Grand Theft Auto movie will be like if one is made in the future.
