The obvious next move for the wildly popular game series Grand Theft Auto has always seemed to be a sideways leap into scripted drama. The game itself built its reputation not just on abject violence and wanton destruction, but also on detailed, evolutionary storylines based on solid writing. Those types of stories lend themselves to live action drama in remarkably easy fashion.
And now, some 18 years after the game franchise first surfaced, it looks like we’ll finally see that much vaunted potential fulfilled, with a drama based on GTA officially announced to be in development.
Well, I mean… kinda.
The BBC is gearing up to launch a campaign that’s aimed at encouraging young kids in Britain to learn how to code and program. As part of this they’ve been hard at work commissioning a series of digital-themed programming and content, one of which has been revealed to be this.
Rather than create a drama lifted straight from one of GTA’s fictitious/satirical worlds, instead we’ll be getting a behind-the-scenes drama focusing on the people involved with creating the series. And that… that’s odd, right? That’s not just me?
The drama itself will reportedly be a 90-minute one-off TV special. Little is known about the path the story itself will take, but the basic history of Grand Theft Auto centres around a gaming studio known as DMA Design, which was founded in Scotland. The company had already scored a major gaming hit in Lemmings before the creation of GTA caused a sensation and exploded onto the market in 1997. Though DMA later became part of the Rockstar corporation, paving the way to the current status of the franchise you all know and love so dearly, it’s said that Rockstar themselves have very little to do with the production of this special.
There’s plenty of scope to create a drama based on the making-of, particularly given the controversy that the game attracted upon release (and hasn’t really let up in the years since), but whether the story behind the franchise is strong enough to stand up on its own – a la The Social Network – remains to be seen.
Former gaming journalist Guy Cocker is the man behind the development, so at the very least if the end result tanks, long-winded, entirely pointless arguments can be had on the internet about how “it’s actually about ethics in drama production.”
via CNet.
