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 over a decade ago that took 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 mentioned film should also include the work of the famous playwright William Shakespeare. Yet here we are.

Grand Theft Hamlet is a new documentary from Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls that follows a group of performers as they try to put on a full production of Hamlet in Grand Theft Auto Online. After seeing the film at SXSW last year and raving about itI was lucky enough to chat with Crane and Grylls about how this unusual but 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 Oosterven 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 lack of anything better to do—Crane began filming his in-game mishaps.

"It might be doing some silly YouTube videos or making little art films or something," Crane said. "I didn't know what it would be, but I knew there was something interesting out there in this world."

Eventually, Crane and Oosterven come across an amphitheater in GTA and have a lightbulb moment: Could they actually do an in-game production of Hamlet? They didn't know, but they started trying. What unfolds A) takes place entirely in-game with no live-action cutscenes, and B) is one of the most satisfying cinematic experiences you'll likely see this year. The film did not secure a premiere early enough to become one of the best movies of 2024but it's a lock to be one of the best movies of 2025.

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

After settling on the idea, they had to find other actors to carry out the production. They incorporated other players from the game, who they only knew through the world of GTA. To say it's an unconventional way to pass the time would be an understatement. To say it's a crazy movie pitch would be an understatement. 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, she was crazy. stupid."

When it came time to make the movie, the game's producer, Rockstar, would have to drop out. Part of the reason why a Grand Theft Auto movie never happened is because Rockstar is precious about 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 early on," Grylls said. "When Sam made a couple of very short films that he posted on YouTube, just of him doing the opening scene of Hamlet with Mark...it kind of went semi-viral, and we got word through people that we knew that people who work because Rockstar saw it and they were kind of tickled by it." Crane added:

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

The idea of ​​doing any manufacturing in the GTA is pretty absurd. The online game is full of people who can disrupt the proceedings at any given moment. It's an uncontrollable mess, yet filmmaking requires control. That's the bottom line. So why choose Hamlet, of all things, as a play?

"Partly it felt like Hamlet was kind of a play that seemed to fit the times we were in — this pandemic and post-pandemic time — because obviously it's a really existential play, right? 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 thinking a lot?" You go with this deep existentialism. I think a lot of people have found themselves doing that in the pandemic. Then there's that GTA world. The funny thing is that you think these are two completely opposite cultural entities, but I think there are a lot of obvious things about the theme in the game about revenge.

"Hamlet seemed to be kind of about that - it was about stealing other people's things," Grylls added. "I guess Hamlet is very much about layers of reality and that people are not what they seem. I think it really suits a computer game, because when you meet people in avatar form, you think, "Who are they really?" You have a game tag, but that's just to keep going and their vote.

In truth, some of the best video game movies aren't direct adaptationsthey are more adjacent to video games. Grand Theft Hamlet is more than next-door, but it also seemingly tries to fit a square peg into a round hole while having 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 idea about it. Same with 'Hamlet,'” Crane said. "I think it's really interesting to bring these two things together that I think are equally valid and equally significant cultural artifacts.

"Hamlet seems to see the world in this duality of wonder at the extraordinary beauty of the world and also a kind of disgust at people and how they behave," Crane said. “That was definitely my experience playing this game as well. "She's so violent and aggressive and brutal, but she's also incredibly beautiful."

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

“I jumped into the game and started doing a lot of research on the game myself trying to figure out how it worked, but also the lights and how I could use the camera, how I could start shooting things in a cinematic way. We just slowly built a way of language that could be more cinematic and tell this story that was unfolding in front of us."

Often, video game movies are big-budget affairs. There are exceptions, such as Josh Reuben's celebrated Werewolves Within."In this case, however, the team had to try and do a lot with very little." “It was really low budget. "We had no money, we were literally just scraping by," Grylls said. "We didn't know if anyone was ever going to see this movie, to be honest."

Another big problem is the fact that this is an online video game where anyone can play it at any time - and those people can kill people trying to play. "There were some problematic characters involved," Grylls said. "That's the nature of the game," Crane added.

The filmmakers did their best to stay true to what actually happened, but had to make some creative choices along the way to craft the narrative seen in the film. Sound, according to Grylls, was the biggest problem:

“The sound was so messed up because either someone else had a microphone that wasn't very good or it wasn't working because there were so many people on stage that it just all came together. We had to do ADR at times. It involved going back and trying to say the things we said."

When it came time for the actual performance, the logistics were really hard to pull together. It took place in multiple locations in the game and, again, they can't control what other players do. They had to make sure the cast was set to play in their last location, otherwise it could delay things by 30 minutes or more. "Each rehearsal lasted at least an hour, just everyone was in the same location to start practicing," Grylls said.

"We were live streaming (the performance), so people were watching it on YouTube and Twitch," Crane explained. "The pines were the eyes of the stream." So we were like, "Please don't kill her. "If it goes down, then the stream dies." "We had to try to be a little careful and try to protect you."

In the end, the stream of the play "Hamlet" was successful. Will he go down as one of the best interpretations of "Hamlet" ever, up there with Laurence Olivier's? That is not for me to say. What is certain is that critics and audiences have responded with almost universal positivity. "Grand Theft Hamlet" won the Jury Prize for Best Documentary at SXSW. "We got longlisted for the BAFTAs, for Christ's sake," Grylls said in surprise. For Crane, the recognition is affirming:

"It just means that this thing that could have been this funny idea that I had that no one would have heard anything about, now it's made a cultural mark, and people have seen it all over the world and it's resonated with people." "I think that's the most unusual thing about me."

"It's been a wonderful surprise," Grylls said of the response to the film. "I never thought I'd make my first (feature) in a game, but it's thanks to Sam, who came up with the idea. Now, audiences will get a chance to experience it in theaters, which is something not every movie gets these days. "It's a film about community and coming together, so to see it find its community in the cinema and people really go with it was amazing," Grylls added.

The Grand Theft Hamlet is in theaters now.