Eminem was going to be in a GTA movie by the director of Top Gun-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

The film that could’ve been (pic: Pixiz)

Back in the early 2000s there was going to be a movie based on GTA 3, but Rockstar said no despite some major money being involved.

For decades, the two biggest non-sports game franchises in video games have been Call Of Duty and Grand Theft Auto and yet despite both of them having plenty of story elements they’ve never been turned into a movie – unlike seemingly every other major game.

There are various reasons for this but the primary one is that neither game needs the publicity, since they already make more revenue than movies. That’s especially true given the poor quality of most video game adaptations, which would likely only harm their reputation instead of improving it.

That doesn’t mean Hollywood hasn’t tried though, with many attempts to adapt both and a new one coming to light for Grand Theft Auto that would’ve involved some very well known talent.

You can tell how old the pitch for the Grand Theft Auto movie is because not only does it hail from a time when Eminem was still a box office draw but Top Gun director Tony Scott died in 2012.

Nevertheless, it’s a project that was not known about until now, with the concept based on the early success of GTA 3, which happened right around the time that Eminem film 8 Mile was released.

The revelation comes from Veemee virtual avatar co-founder Kirk Ewing who claims that, in his previous capacity as an agent, he almost talked Rockstar Games boss Sam Houser into making a film.

‘Because of the relationship 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 for a while, and the two of us stayed up late and talked about the possibility of making a film,’ said Ewing on the Bugzy Malone podcast.

‘This was just after Grand Theft Auto 3 and I think at that point, it was still in Sam’s mind that it might be something he wanted to do.’

The idea to involve Eminem and Tony Scott came from unnamed L.A. producers, but apparently, when presented with the possibility, Houser turned it all down.

Ewing explains that Rockstar lost interest, ‘when they realised that the media franchise they had was bigger than any movie that was going on at the time.’

Since that’s still true, there seems little reason to expect a change of mind from Rockstar, although they have seen a lot of staff changes recently, including the exit of Sam Houser’s brother, and fellow co-founder, Dan Houser.

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