There could have been Grand Theft Auto movie starring Eminem but Rockstar Games declined.
Games industry veteran Kirk Ewing, a friend of Rockstar co-founders Sam and Dan Houser, told Bugzy Malone's Grandest Game podcast, that a Hollywood agent came to him with the deal, via BBC.
Ewing shared that an LA producer once approached him with a $5 million offer to buy the rights to an Eminem-led Grand Theft Auto, with Top Gun helmer Tony Scott in the director's chair. However, Sam Houser told the agent they were "not interested".
GTA was released in 2001 on Playstation 2 and the pioneering title laid the groundwork for the rest of the series and the imitators that would follow, the outlet reported.
In the same year, Eminem’s album Marshall Mathers LP was one of the fastest-selling studio albums in the United States. The rapper had also just wrapped shooting on his debut movie 8 Mile - a semi-biographical film.
“At that point,” Ewing explained, “they withdrew from any conversation about making a film when they realised the media franchise, they had was bigger than any movie that was going on at the time.”
Kirk, whose game State of Emergency was released by Rockstar, says the Housers had been talking about a movie tie-in around the time GTA 3 took the world by storm.
Recalling the incident, Ewing told the podcast that the agent had tracked Sam Houser to a hotel, where the two stayed up late to discuss the possibility of making a GTA movie. “I think at that point it was still in Sam's mind that it might be something that he wanted to do," he explained.
He also mentioned that he was phoned at 04:00 by an LA producer with an offer. Kirk recalls, “He said 'Kirk we've got Eminem to star, and it's a Tony Scott film - $5m on the nose. Are you interested?'
“And I phoned up Sam and I said 'Listen to this. They want Eminem in the Grand Theft Auto movie and Tony Scott to direct’.
“And he said, ‘Not interested’.”