How The Most Unusual Video Game Movie Ever Was Made, According To Its Directors [Exclusive Interview]

MUBI

In the world of gaming, there are few names bigger than Grand Theft Auto. While the games have been incredibly popular since their inception, it was the release of Grand Theft Auto V more than a decade ago that took the series to the stratosphere. More importantly, Grand Theft Auto Online gave the series new life, and has since become one of the most popular games on the planet. It's only natural that the game would make a good subject for a movie. It's far less natural that said movie would also involve the work of famed playwright William Shakespeare. Yet, here we are.

"Grand Theft Hamlet" is a new documentary from Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls that sees a ragtag group of performers attempting to stage a full production of "Hamlet" inside of Grand Theft Auto Online. After seeing the film at SXSW last year and raving about it, I had the good fortune of speaking with Crane and Grylls about how this wildly unusual yet wonderful video game movie came to be.

During the pandemic lockdowns in early 2021 in the UK, Crane began playing GTA with his pal Mark Oosterveen as a way to pass the time for two out-of-work actors. Then, sensing that there might be something interesting to their shenanigans — and for a lack of anything better to do — Crane started recording his misadventures inside the game.

"It might have ended up just being some silly YouTube videos or making little kind of art films or something," Crane said. "I didn't know what it was going to be, but I knew there was something interesting there in this world."

Ultimately, Crane and Oosterveen stumble upon an amphitheater in GTA and they have a lightbulb moment: Could they actually put on a production of "Hamlet" inside of the game? They didn't know, but they set about trying. What unfolds A) happens entirely within the game with no live-action scenes, and B) is one of the most satisfying cinematic experiences one is likely to come across this year. The film didn't secure a release early enough to become one of the best movies of 2024, but it's a lock to be one of the best movies of 2025.

Crane started filming really early on, meaning he was able to document the entire journey that makes up the film. Even before Grylls came on board to direct, he had tons of footage. They experimented, with the two actors even trying out a Soccer (or football, for you folks in the UK) talk show within the game. "Watching what he was doing, I just thought, 'Actually, I think this could be more than a YouTube video,'" Grylls said.

Once they settled on the idea, they had to find other actors to stage the production. They incorporated other players from within the game, who they only ever knew through the world of GTA. To say it was an unconventional way to pass the time would be an understatement. To say it was a crazy pitch for a movie would be an even bigger one. Crane had no illusions about the whole thing:

"All the way along with this project, we tried so hard to get support from big institutions, and for the most part, we got nothing. I can see why. It was a ridiculous idea. I mean, it was nuts. It was stupid."

When it came time to actually make the movie, the game's producer, Rockstar, would need to sign off. Part of the reason why a Grand Theft Auto movie never happened is because Rockstar is precious about the IP. Fortunately, the studio was very supportive of the project, understanding what it was that Crane, Grylls, and everyone involved were trying to do.

"Rockstar actually knew about the project from quite early on," Grylls said. "When Sam made a few very short films that he put onto YouTube, just of him doing the opening scene of Hamlet with Mark ... it kind of went semi-viral, and we got word through people who we knew that people who worked for Rockstar had seen it and they were kind of tickled by it." Crane added:

"They never wanted to have any kind of control over it or make it their film, but I think they liked what we were doing with it, basically. It's pretty clear I think that it's kind of a love letter to the game in some ways, as much as it is a love letter to Shakespeare."

MUBI

The idea of staging any production inside of GTA is fairly absurd. The online game is rife with people who can disrupt the proceedings at any given moment. It's uncontrollable chaos, yet filmmaking requires control. That's the baseline. So why pick "Hamlet," of all things, as the play?

"Partly it felt like, 'Hamlet' is kind of a play that seemed to fit the time we were in — this sort of pandemic and post-pandemic time — because obviously it's really an existential play, isn't it?" Crane said. The actor and co-director also explained that there are connections between these two seemingly disparate cultural works:

"What do you do when you start to think a lot? You go with this deep existentialism. I think a lot of people found themselves doing that in the pandemic. Then there's also that world of GTA. The funny thing is, you think these are two completely opposite cultural entities, but I think there's so much connecting them. There's kind of obvious things about thematics in the game about revenge."

"It just felt like in Hamlet it's kind of about that — it's about stealing someone else's stuff," Grylls added. "I guess it was also that Hamlet very much is about layers of reality and people not being what they seem. I think that really fits a computer game, because when you meet people in an avatar form, you think, 'Who are they really?' You've got a gamertag, but that's all to go on. And their voice."

In fairness, some of the best movies about video games aren't direct adaptations, they're more video game-adjacent. "Grand Theft Hamlet" is more than adjacent, but it's also seemingly trying to fit a square peg into a round hole while strangers are shooting 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 idea of it. The same with 'Hamlet,'" Crane said. "I think it's really interesting to put these two things together that I think are both equally valid and equally kind of significant cultural artifacts."

MUBI

"Hamlet seems to view the world in this duality of wonder at the extraordinary beauty of the world and also kind of disgust at humans and how they behave," Crane said. "That was definitely my experience of playing this game as well. It is so violent and aggressive and brutal, but it's also incredibly beautiful."

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

"I jumped into the game and I started exploring the game very much on my own trying to understand how it works, but also the lights and how I could use the camera, how I could start filming things in a cinematic way. I just slowly built up a way of a language which could be more cinematic and tell this story which was unfolding in front of us."

Oftentimes, video game movies are big-budget affairs. There are exceptions, such as Josh Ruben's acclaimed "Werewolves Within." In this case, though, the team had to try and do a lot with very little. "It was a really low budget. We had no money, we were literally just making it on the hoof," Grylls said. "We didn't know if anyone would ever watch this film, to be frank."

Another big issue is the fact that this is an online video game where anyone can pop it at any time — and those people can kill the people trying to put on a play. "There were a few troublesome characters involved," Grylls said. "That is the nature of the game," Crane added.

The filmmakers did their best to stay faithful to what actually happened, but they did have to make some creative choices along the way to craft the narrative seen in the film. Sound, per Grylls, was the biggest issue: 

"Sound was so mushed together because either somebody else had a mic that wasn't very good or was malfunctioning, because there were so many people in the scene that it just all became mushed together. We did have to do some ADR at times. That involved having to go back and try and say the things that we'd said."

MUBI

When it came time for the actual performance, the logistics were truly difficult to cobble together. It took place over multiple locations within the game and, again, they can't control what other players were doing. They had to make sure the cast was set up to respawn in their last location, otherwise it could delay things for 30 minutes or more. "Every rehearsal was at least an hour just getting everyone into the same location to start rehearsing," Grylls said.

"We were live-streaming [the performance], so people were watching it on YouTube and Twitch," Crane explained. "Pinny was the eyes of the stream. So we were like, 'Please don't kill her. If she goes down, then the stream dies.' We had to try and be a bit careful and try to keep you protected."

In the end, the stream of the "Hamlet" performance was a success. Is it going to go down as one of the best interpretations of "Hamlet" ever, up there with Laurence Olivier's? That's not for me to say. What is for certain is that critics and audiences have responded with near-universal positivity. "Grand Theft Hamlet" went on to win the Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature at SXSW. "We got longlisted for a BAFTA, for Christ's sake," Grylls said in surprise. For Crane, the acclaim has been validating:

"It just means that this thing that could have just been this ridiculous idea that I'd had that no one would've heard anything about has now made a cultural mark, and people have seen it around the world and it has resonated with people. I think that's the most extraordinary thing for me."

"It's a delightful surprise," Grylls said of the response to the film. "I never believed that I would make my first [feature] inside a game, but that's thanks to Sam, who came up with this nuts idea." Now, audiences are going to have the chance to experience it in theaters, which is something not every film gets these days. "It's a film about community and coming together, so to see it find its community in the cinema and people just really go with it was incredible," Grylls added.

"Grand Theft Hamlet" is in theaters now.