Eminem was once pitched for a GTA movie but Rockstar Games turned it down Rockstar GamesGTA co-creator Sam Houser allegedly shut down the idea of a GTA movie starring Eminem, the film having been pitched to him just after the release of GTA 3. While it seems like almost every major video game franchise is getting a film or TV show adaptation at the moment, the gaming industry has never had the best reputation when it comes to creating movies or shows based on the source material. However, it has now been revealed that one of gaming\u2019s biggest juggernaut franchises almost had a movie in the works. That franchise being the iconic Grand Theft Auto series. In the new episode of BBC\u2019s Bugzy Malone\u2019s Grandest Game podcast, Kirk Ewing spoke about his relationship with GTA developer Rockstar and how \u2013 at one point in time \u2013 his job as an agent led him to help pitch a GTA film to the company co-founder and President, Sam Houser. \u201cBecause of the relationship that I had with Rockstar and I had with Sam, I actually tracked him down to his hotel room one night where I knew he was going to be staying, and the two of us stayed up late and talked about the possibility of making a film,\u201d began Ewing. \u201cThis was just after [GTA] 3. And I think at that point, you know, it was still in Sam\u2019s mind that it might be something that he wanted to do.\u201d And while it may seem like a no-brainer to green light a GTA film now, this pitch was from the early 2000s. A time when video game films didn\u2019t exactly have the best reputation. The GTA movie had Eminem and a big-name director attached Not only was the general idea floated around but the pitch also had a director and big star attached to the project. \u201cI remember taking a call about 4AM from a producer in Los Angeles with an offer to make a film, and he said, \u2018Kirk, we\u2019ve got Eminem to star, and it\u2019s a Tony Scott film, five million on the nose, are you interested?\u2019\u201d Tony Scott being a very successful action director, having worked on the likes of the original Top Gun film. Despite this, the idea was swiftly shut down, Ewing then explaining how he \u201cphoned up Sam and said \u2018Look, listen to this, they want Eminem in the Grand Theft Auto movie and Tony Scott to direct, and he said: \u2018Not interested.\u2019\u201d Ewing then went on to add that \u201cat that point, they withdrew from any conversation about making a film, when they realized that the media franchise that they had, what they had, was bigger than any movie that was going on at the time.\u201d And while the Eminem-led GTA movie pitch was shut down, there is always the possibility that one could get made at some point in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eminem was once pitched for a GTA movie but Rockstar Games turned it down Rockstar GamesGTA co-creator Sam Houser allegedly shut down the idea of a GTA movie starring Eminem, the film having been pitched to him just after the release of GTA 3. While it seems like almost every major video game franchise is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}