Rockstar Considered Red Dead Redemption & GTA Movies, But Ultimately Dropped The Idea

Rockstar Games had considered making Red Dead Redemption and GTA movies at one point, but had ultimately dropped the idea.

Speaking during an interview, Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser revealed that, during his time at the company, he would get calls to talk about adapting Red Dead Redemption or GTA into movies or TV projects. He mentioned that, after a few awkward meetings with executives, him and Sam Houser would ask why they would want to work on a film or TV adaptation. The executives would respond by saying that Rockstar Games would get to make a movie.

Houser mentioned that Rockstar Games would turn down the offer, telling the movie executives that they weren’t interested in making an adaptation where they would have no control. By doing so, they would be taking a huge risk that they may have ended up paying for with their IP.

According to Houser, the movie executives thought the Rockstar Games co-founders would be “blinded by the lights” and that just wasn’t the case. He said that the developer owned what it considered to be multi-billion-dollar IP. He said that, at the time, the economics nor the risk made sense. He added that, in those days, the perception was that games made poor-quality movies. Though he admitted that it’s a different time nowadays.

Since departing from Rockstar Games, Dan Houser formed a new game studio called Absurd Ventures. Recently, a job listing for the position of Lead Gameplay Designer at the studio revealed that it is working on a AAA open world action adventure game. The new recruit at Dan Houser’s studio will become the hands-on contributor for the 3 Cs of game design i.e. Character, Controls, and Camera, in an open world action-adventure game. They will lead a team of multi-disciplinary specialists to work on combat and third person gameplay across multiple game modes.