Grand Theft Auto (GTA) and Hamlet are perhaps two of the furthest things that one would associate the other with, but not for Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane. During the pandemic, the husband-and-wife duo fully recreated William Shakespeare’s famous tragedy play inside GTA Online, turning the entire process into a full-length documentary.
The film, titled Grand Theft Hamlet, would premiere at SXSW (pronounced “South by Southwest”) this year and win the documentary feature jury award, with the in-game production itself nabbing the Stage Innovation Award in 2023. Now that arthouse streamer and distributor Mubi has gotten rights to the movie, it will be coming to cinemas in the U.S. and streaming globally.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the doc is expected to bow in early 2025, after its U.K. premiere at the British Film Institute’s London Film Festival on 15 October. It includes over 300 hours of in-game material, highlighting the absurd beauty of staging a Shakespeare performance while trying to avoid rocket launchers and other forms of disruption.
The film’s official site lists the following description for Grand Theft Hamlet:
The documentary asks what is this space? How do we use it now and what else is possible inside it? Can we transport this ancient story inside a brand new one? And will it still make sense? The cinematic potential of Los Santos is immediately apparent, with its glittering, mind-blowingly detailed cityscape and surrounding countryside, the ray-traced rendering of light, ever-changing weather systems and intricate sound design. By using the in-game phone camera we were able to get intimate close ups and cinematic pans across landscapes – enabling a more cinematic visual language and moments of pathos, emotion and lyricism to exist within the chaos and violence of this undiscovered country.
The documentary is slated to hit cinemas in the U.S. in early 2025, before the Fall release window of the hotly anticipated GTA 6, led by the protagonist pair of Lucia and Jason.
Si Jia is a casual geek at heart – or as casual as someone with Sephiroth’s theme on her Spotify playlist can get. A fan of movies, games, and Japanese culture, Si Jia’s greatest weakness is the Steam Summer Sale. Or any Steam sale, really.
Kevin Low
Joey Leong
