One of the biggest news stories from the gaming industry this last week is the announcement that the first official reveal for Grand Theft Auto 6 will be heading our way this December – and this time around, it’s not even a rumour.
And while many gamers (us included) have seen this week as a celebration of a game we’ve been waiting for for what feels like a lifetime, a question has also been floating around the interwebs: when will Grand Theft Auto make the jump from our gaming rigs to the big screen.
However, according to Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, gamers need to reign themselves in and just be happy with the upcoming game because, and I quote, “the publisher isn’t interested in chasing a big-screen GTA project because it’s just not worth the effort.”
During an investors call yesterday, Strauss Zelnick said that if Take-Two were to finance a film or series based on the iconic franchise, it would probably be wildly successful financially however Strauss Zelnick also said:
“Films and television are very difficult businesses. I’ve been in them successfully. They’re super challenging. They’re not what we do. We’d much prefer the risk/reward profile of the business we’re in.”
When asked about licensing the Grand Theft Auto property out and just taking a cut of the profits, Strauss Zelnick made it clear that the payoff wouldn’t be worth the effort, even if it were to be a huge hit.
“To put it in context, Mattel’s licensing profits on the Barbie movie, which was an extraordinary hit,, are expected to be about $125 million. That’s not nothing, but the licensing fees Take-Two would earn on a GTA film would be a fraction of what we makes on its games.
The hit ratios in the motion picture business are vastly lower than they are in the interactive entertainment business. Our hit ratios for console properties are in the 80% or 90%. The hit ratio for a well-run movie studio is around 30%, which is to say there’s a 70% chance that the movie that we license could fail.
And so in success, the number, in terms of the benefit to our bottom line … it’s not zero, but it’s not really material to what we do around here. And in failure, we run the risk of compromising the underlying intellectual property.”
So there you have it. We are definitely seeing a return of everyone’s favourite crime franchise in Grand Theft Auto 6, but a movie or series seems more unlikely than waking up to GTA 6 having been released tomorrow morning.