How the most unusual video game movie of all time was made, according to the directors

There are few names in the gaming world bigger than Grand Theft Auto. While the games have been incredibly popular since their inception, it was the release of Grand Theft Auto V over a decade ago that catapulted the series into the stratosphere. More importantly, Grand Theft Auto Online breathed new life into the series and has since become one of the most popular games on the planet. It's only natural that a game would be a good subject for a movie. It is much less natural that the work of the famous playwright William Shakespeare would also be included in said film. Yet here we are.

Grand Theft Hamlet is a new documentary from Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls, which sees a group of performers in Grand Theft Auto Online attempt to put on a full production of Hamlet. After seeing the film at SXSW last year and raving about itI had the good fortune to speak with Crane and Grylls about how this wildly unusual yet wonderful video game movie came to be.

During the pandemic lockdown in early 2021 in the UK, Crane started playing GTA with his friend Mark Ostween to pass the time for the two out-of-work actors. Then, sensing that there might be something interesting in their magic—and having nothing better to do—Crane began recording his failures in-game.

“It'll probably end up just being silly YouTube videos or making a little feature film or something,” Crain said. “I didn't know what it would be, but I knew there was something interesting in this world.”

Eventually, Crane and Oosterveen stumble upon GTA Amphitheater and have a lightbulb moment: Could they really do an in-game production of Hamlet? They didn't know, but they started trying. What happens A) takes place entirely in-game with no live-action cutscenes, and B) is one of the most satisfying cinematic experiences you'll encounter this year. The film was not secured early enough to become one of the best films of 2024but it stands in the way of becoming one of the best movies of 2025.

Crane started filming very early on, meaning he was able to document the entire journey that goes into making a film. Even before Grylls came on board to direct, he had plenty of material. They experimented, with the two actors even trying out for a football (or soccer, for you folks in the UK) talk show as part of the game. “Watching what he was doing, I just thought, 'Actually, I think this might be more than a YouTube video,'” Grylls said.

Once they accepted the idea, they had to find other actors to direct the production. They included other players from the game that they only knew from the GTA world. To say it was an unconventional way to spend time would be an understatement. To say it was a crazy movie pitch would be an understatement. Crane had no illusions about everything:

“The whole time we were doing this project, we tried so hard to get support from big institutions, and mostly we didn't get anything. I can see why. It was a ridiculous idea. I thought it was crazy. It was stupid.”

When it came time to make the movie, the game's producer, Rockstar, had to back out. Part of the reason the Grand Theft Auto movie never happened it's because Rockstar has a valuable IP. Fortunately, the studio was very supportive of the project, understanding what Crane, Grylls and everyone involved were trying to do.

“Rockstar actually knew about the project quite early on,” Grylls said. “When Sam made some very short films that he put on YouTube, just of him doing the opening scene of Hamlet with Mark… it went semi-popular and we got messages from people we knew that people who worked because Rockstar had seen it and it kind of tickled them.” Crane added:

“They never wanted to control it in any way or make it their own movie, but I think they liked what we did with it. It's pretty clear, I think it's kind of a love letter to the game. what a love letter it is to Shakespeare.”

The idea of ​​staging any production inside GTA is pretty absurd. In an online game, there are many people who can disrupt the process at any moment. It's an uncontrollable mess, yet filmmaking requires control. That's the baseline. So why choose “Hamlet” as the play?

“Part of it felt like Hamlet was the kind of play that seemed to fit the times we were in — this kind of pandemic and post-pandemic time, because obviously it's really an existential play, right?” Crane said. The actor and the co-director also explained that there are connections between these two seemingly disparate cultural works:

“What do you do when you start thinking a lot? You end up with this deep existentialism. I think a lot of people did during the pandemic. Then there's the world of GTA. The funny thing is that you think these are two completely opposite cultural entities, but , I think they are so much related, there are obvious things in the game about revenge.

“It just felt like that's what Hamlet is about — it's about stealing somebody else's stuff,” Grill added. “I think it was also that Hamlet is very much about the layers of reality and people not being what they seem. I think that really fits the video game, because when you meet people in avatar form, you think, 'What are they really?' You have a gamertag, but that's it to continue.

to be honest some of the best video game movies aren't direct adaptationsthey are more related to video games. “Grand Theft Hamlet” is more than next-door, but it also feels like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole while strangers shoot at you. That was part of the appeal. “Even if you've never played GTA, you know what it is, you've heard of it or you have some kind of idea about it. Same with 'Hamlet,'” Crane said. “I think it's really interesting to combine these two things, which I think are equally valid and equally important cultural artifacts.”

“Hamlet seems to look at the world in this dichotomy of marveling at the extraordinary beauty of the world and also disgust at people and their behavior,” Crane said. “That was definitely my experience playing this game as well. It's so violent and aggressive and brutal, but it's also incredibly beautiful.”

Logistically, since they weren't using any live-action footage, Grylls had to figure out how to functionally make a feature film for GTA. It was quite an unusual task, especially for a first-time feature director. For Grylls, it just meant diving into the world and getting her hands dirty:

“I jumped into the game and started researching the game very much on my own, trying to understand how it worked, but also the lights and how I could use the camera, how I could start filming things in a cinematic way. I just slowly created a language that could be more cinematic and tell this story that unfolded before us.”

Video game movies are often big budget affairs. There are exceptions, such as Josh Ruben's celebrated Werewolves Within.“However, in this case, the team had to try to do a lot with very little. “It was a really low budget. We didn't have any money, we were literally scraping by,” Grill said. “Frankly, we didn't know if anyone was ever going to see this movie.”

Another big problem is the fact that this is an online video game where anyone can post it at any time and those people can kill people trying to play the show. “There are some troublesome characters involved,” Grill said. “That's the nature of the game,” Crane added.

The filmmakers did their best to stay true to what actually happened, but they had to make some creative choices along the way to develop the narrative in the film. According to Grills, the sound was the biggest problem:

“The sound was so messed up because either someone else had a mic that wasn't very good or it wasn't working properly because there were so many people on stage that everything just got mixed up. We had to do ADR at times. It meant going back and try to say what we had said.”

When it came time for the actual operation, the logistics were really hard to pull together. This happened in several places in the game and again they have no control over what other players do. They had to make sure the cast was set to spawn at their last location or it could delay things by 30 minutes or more. “Every rehearsal was at least an hour to get everyone in the same place to start rehearsals,” Grill said.

“We were live streaming (the show), so people were watching it on YouTube and Twitch,” Crane explained. “Piney had the eyes of a stream. So we thought, 'Please don't kill him.' If she falls, then the stream dies.” We had to try to be a little careful and try to protect you.”

After all, the stream of performances of “Hamlet” was a success. Will it go down as one of the the best interpretations of “Hamlet” ever with Laurence Olivier? I don't have to say that. It's clear that critics and audiences have responded with almost universal positivity. “Grand Theft Hamlet” won the Jury Prize for Best Documentary at SXSW. “We've been shortlisted for BAFTA, for God's sake,” said Grill, surprised. Crane's recognition has confirmed:

“It just means that this thing that could have been such a ridiculous idea that no one would have heard of has now made a cultural mark and people have seen it all over the world and it's resonated with people. I think this is most unusual for me.

“It's been a delightful surprise,” Grill said of the reaction to the film. “I never thought I'd be doing my first (feature), but it's thanks to Sam coming up with this brilliant idea.” Now the audience will have a chance to experience it in theaters, which is not every movie these days. “It's a movie about community and coming together, so to see it find its community in the theater and people really go with it was incredible,” Grills added.

Grand Theft Hamlet is in theaters now.