Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser talks about GTA movie: Report

Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser, who is currently the producer and creative director at Absurd Ventures, recently discussed why a Red Dead Redemption or GTA movie never happened. In a rare interview, he revealed some interesting details about how Rockstar got offers for turning their profitable IP into a movie or TV series, and why they turned those down.

Dan Houser left Rockstar Games in 2020, and this is the first time he's spoken about a GTA movie since. So here's everything you need to know about it.

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Dan Houser explains why a GTA movie never happened

In a recent interview with The Ankler, Dan Houser, the former head writer and vice president of creativity at Rockstar Games, revealed why they never accepted to make an RDR or GTA movie. Both these game franchises have been heavily influenced by movies from both Hollywood and beyond, and have sometimes been compared to movies themselves.

Houser revealed during the interview that Rockstar has received calls about adapting one of their IPs into a movie. He said:

"After a few awkward dates, we’d ask [the executives], why would we do this?"

They would presumably respond, "Because you get to make a movie." Houser then adds:

"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. It's a different time now."

What Dan Houser calls "those days" refers to a time when video-game movies wouldn't do well, so a GTA movie seemed out of the question. They would often deviate quite a bit from the themes and storylines of the games as well.

For instance, Max Payne, a game developed by Remedy but published by Rockstar, got a movie adaptation in 2008. The story was vastly different from that of the game, and although it wasn't a commercial flop, the reviews weren't very good.

GTA movie was being discussed when game adaptations rarely found success. (Image via Rockstar Games || GTA Fandom)

However, movies and TV shows based on video games have been doing quite well recently, with successful titles like Detective Pikachu, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and even the Fallout TV series making headlines.

As such, a GTA movie is something fans have been dreaming about for a while now. The Red Dead Redemption series has often been compared to popular Western movies, and it's hard to deny that RDR2 plays out more like an interactive movie instead of a video game.

Dan Houser started his own company, Absurd Ventures, in 2023, and has been joined by Lazlow Jones and Michael Unsworth since then. The company, which Houser claimed was to "create new universes and tell great stories," is currently working on American Caper, a graphic novel series, and A Better Paradise, a 12-episode audio fiction series, alongside a new open-world video game.