Why a Grand Theft Auto movie hasn't gotten off the ground (yet)
by Ben Gilbert 
on Feb 4th 2010 7:00PM
You know
Gamer, right? That movie with a pasty-faced kid controlling human prisoners in a future game? Well, it turns out that the film almost ended up as a
Grand Theft Auto joint. According to a
recent interview with co-writer/director Mark Neveldine, "We [Neveldine and co-writer Brian Taylor] actually were going to be hired to write
GTA. I am sure that was part of it. That was after we wrote and directed
Crank, so I got involved with
GTA pretty heavily, I didn't grow up with it."
Neveldine claims that it was a "rights issue" that caused the silver screen adaptation of
GTA to founder. "It was a movie originally directed by Ron Howard ... and because Rockstar Games made a video game, there is some battle of who can use the title ... you can't make it about the game." Back in 2008, Variety alleged that a
GTA movie was on the precipice of production when
the deal fell through, but we get the feeling that these folks are speaking about something completely different.
