According to Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick, the company has no major expansion plans in film and television projects. Given that Take-Two is the parent company of Rockstar Games, this statement means we won’t be seeing a movie adaptation of AAA games like Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption anytime soon.
During a recent revenue announcement, Zelnick announced that The Super Mario Bros. He acknowledged the massive box office success of movies like The Movie and video game adaptations like HBO’s The Last of Us. However, he believes the economics of the film/TV business remains challenging as it consists of failed examples rather than successful examples.
“We will not use our balance sheet to invest in film and television projects,” Zelnick said. “These are typically very challenging asset classes that I’m pretty familiar with,” he said. He noted that despite several high-profile successes, there were many money-losing failures in adapting video games to film and TV.
Take-Two also plans to remain very selective about licensing its properties for adaptation. There is currently a Borderlands movie from Lionsgate and a BioShock movie from Netflix in production. But Zelnick says Take-Two will focus on the core video game business, which offers far greater economic opportunities: “The reason you’ve failed in the past is because IP’s wording hasn’t been very good despite people’s best efforts. This is really hard work. And we will not bet on the future of this company or the value of our intellectual property based on someone else’s performance in another area of the entertainment business. So we will continue to be very selective. Indeed, even if we have taken a broad-based approach, economic opportunity for our core business is limited in the context of much greater economic opportunity when we do not invest in ourselves.”
In short, Take-Two does not plan to make significant investments or expand into film/TV production, although it is open to licensing deals in certain circumstances. The company believes its resources are better spent developing popular video game franchises.
Meanwhile, Lionsgate has announced that the Borderlands movie will hit theaters on August 9, 2024. Based on the sci-fi shooter-RPG games developed by Gearbox Software, the adaptation takes place on the desert planet Pandora.
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