Rockstar Games Reportedly Turned Down a ‘Grand Theft Auto’ Movie Pitch That Would’ve Starred Eminem.
‘Top Gun’ director Tony Scott was initially set to helm the movie.
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Rockstar Games reportedly rejected a film adaptation of Grand Theft Auto starring Eminem in the early 2000s.
In a recent appearance on Bugzy Malone’s Grandest Game podcast, Kirk Ewing, an industry veteran and friend of GTA creators Sam and Dan Houser, explained that shortly after Grand Theft Auto III was released in 2001, Sam turned down a $5 million offer for the movie rights. Top Gun director Tony Scott was meant to helm the film while Eminem—who had just released The Marshall Mathers LP the year before and won Best Rap Album Best Rap Solo Performance at the 2001 GRAMMYs—was set to star.
“[The agent] said, ‘Kirk, we’ve got Eminem to star, and it’s a Tony Scott film. $5 million on the nose. Are you interested?'” Ewing said. “And I phoned up Sam, and I said: ‘Listen to this. They want Eminem in the Grand Theft Auto movie and Tony Scott to direct.’ And he said: ‘Not interested’… They realized that the media franchise that they had was bigger than any movie that was going on at the time.”
Even though they never created the GTA movie, Em starred in 8 Mile the year after, which won him an Academy Award for Best Original Song with “Lose Yourself.”
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