Why Hasn't There Been A GTA Or Red Dead Movie? Jack Black Wants To Know

Jack Black is surprised that there hasn't been a movie based on Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption so far, but there might actually be a good reason for that.

Speaking to Total Film, Black said, "I can't believe they haven't already started making a movie of any of the Rockstar Games--Grand Theft Auto, but especially Red Dead Redemption."

He said the GTA and Red Dead games are "already like movies," and that might explain why they haven't been adapted into feature films as of yet. "Some video games are already halfway there to telling those kind of stories, and there are some movies that are like video games," he said.

For what it's worth, Rockstar parent company Take-Two's CEO Strauss Zelnick has said the company would want to fund a potential GTA or Red Dead movie itself to avoid a situation where some other entity might get to call the creative shots.

"Part of it is, if we were to do something like that, we'd want to have complete creative control to make sure we expressed [GTA] in the way we wanted--and that would mean we'd need to finance that motion picture," Zelnick said. "While we have the balance sheet to do it, we don't have the corporate expertise to do it, because only a handful of people inside Take-Two have ever worked in that business. I'm one of them. But that's not what we do for a living."

Zelnick has also reminded people that movies are by and large not a very profitable business. The Super Mario Bros. was a massive commercial success with over $1 billion at the box office, but Zelnick said more often than not, video game movies fail and money is lost.

Zelnick previously served as the president and chief operating officer of 20th Century Fox where he oversaw production and distribution of numerous movies. He was only 32 years old when he was running Fox's film business.

Take-Two has licensed a couple of its franchises for feature films already. The Rock starred in 2005's Doom and Mark Wahlberg played the lead in 2008's Max Payne movie. Both were panned critically and didn't make much money at the box office. Looking ahead, there is a star-studded Borderlands movie based on the 2K franchise coming this August and a BioShock movie in the works for Netflix.

Black went on to say that he sees a future where video games and movies merge more than before. He cited the interactive Black Mirror episode Bandersnatch as an example of this.

"I think we're moving in that way where there's going to be more combinations of video games and movies, and it's exciting. It's like the beginning of a new era," he said.

Black voiced Bowser in 2023's The Super Mario Bros. Movie and is playing Steve in the Minecraft movie. His next video game role is voicing Claptrap in the Borderlands film.