Critically revered video game developers Rockstar have a history of giving their output a very cinematic aesthetic, and this has evidently not gone unnoticed by the film industry, as it was recently announced that their upcoming highly-anticipated title LA Noire is to be honored as an Official Selection at this years Tribeca Film Festival. It has been baffling for fans, then, that we have not yet seen a film adaptation of one of their licenses, most notably the 70's movies mob-'em-up Grand Theft Auto series. Imagine it: A brisk spring morning in Liberty City, our battle-scarred, gravelly voiced protagonist (played by someone ugly and awesome like Mickey Rourke) would step into view, semi-automatic in hand, his face bloodied and bruised following a botched drug deal that saw him being double-crossed by the city's most notorious crime family The Ramones. Without hesitation, he steps out into the road, pointing his gun at an oncoming taxi cab and forcing its occupants onto the street. Throwing a huge wad of notes at the drivers feet ("That should cover it", he says), he gets behind the wheel and continues his pursuit. His pursuit for REVENGE. Unfortunately, Hollywood would take this fantastic premise (and it is fantastic) and roughly translate it to 'Mark Wahlberg's girlfriend gets shot and then he kills a load of people'. It would be a critical duff, a financial success, and everyone involved would walk away grinning a grin only achieved when you have gleefully tossed your vile man salad across the hopes and dreams of a fan base. Rockstar's co-founder Dan Houser seems to recognise this, as evidenced by an interview for The Hollywood Reporter, wherein he states that "virtually all movies made from games are awful, while many games made from movies are also pretty horrible". Whodathunkit? Acknowledging the speculation that has surrounded a potential movie deal for the company, Houser continued;
We have explored a lot of movie deals, but we have just chosen not to make a movie. We love movies, but we also love games and that is what we remain focused on. If we were to attempt to make a movie, we would like to make it ourselves, or at least work in collaboration with the best talent, so at least if it is bad, we can know we failed on our own terms. But doing that takes time, and making games properly takes a lot of time. So, we may make movies one day, with the right property and the right partnership, but we have not found the time to do that yet.
Nice to see someone in the industry is able to differentiate between the two mediums. I'd almost lost hope when I heard that so-filmic-it-basically-is-a-film Heavy Rain was being geared up for an 'adaptation'. The only way they could make something original and creative out of that source material is if they equipped every member of the audience with a motion sensor device, and forced them to jump and sway in their seats like lunatics in order to save Mark Wahlberg from a slow death at the hands of the papier-mache killer.