Strauss Zelnick – CEO of Take-Two – said the company has no interest in bringing Grand Theft Auto to the big screen, basically because it’s not worth the effort. If Take-Two invests in a movie or series and it is successful, Take-Two will make a lot of money. However, the likelihood of this happening is not high.
Zelnick said film and television are extremely difficult businesses. He has been in this industry and found it extremely challenging, and that is not Take-Two’s strength anymore.
Another way is to let someone else borrow the Grand Theft Auto brand to make a movie, then Take-Two will take a portion of the profits from that movie. But even so, it’s not worth it, even if the movie is a huge success.
To make it easier to imagine, Zelnick said the amount of profit that Mattel earned from licensing the Barbie movie was estimated to be around 125 million USD, and Barbie was a hugely successful movie in theaters. That number is also big, but Zelnick said that if Take-Two did the same thing with GTA, the amount of money they would make (if the movie was successful) would only be a small fraction of the amount of money they made selling the game ( In the last quarter, Take-Two achieved net revenue of 1.3 billion USD).
Zelnick said the success rate in the film segment is much lower than in the gaming segment. For example, the success rate of a game that Take-Two makes on console is between 80% and 90%, while the success rate of a movie that a “stable” movie studio makes is about 30%. That means up to 70% of the GTA movies that Take-Two licensed to produce will fail.
In addition, Zelnick also said that if he pursues the film project and it fails, it will affect the reputation of the Grand Theft Auto name in general. In general, Zelnick feels that this move has too many risks, so he still wants Take-Two to continue doing what they are good at – creating blockbuster games.
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