Actor Jack Black is a big fan of video games, and specifically Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption series, and he thinks it’s too bad that there hasn’t been a Red Dead movie yet.
Speaking to Polygon, Black said it’s a “shame” that Rockstar isn’t making a Red Dead movie because the games are “the most cinematic” and would seemingly lend themselves nicely to a big-screen adaptation. “It would be, like, too easy to make them into great movies,” he said, adding that he would love to be in a Red Dead movie if anyone asked him.
“Hey Housers? Dan, Sam, I’m waiting for your call,” he said, referencing the Rockstar founder brothers. Dan Houser left Rockstar in 2020 to start a new company, Absurd Ventures. Sam Houser remains at Rockstar and is its current president.
Also in the interview, Black said he understands that the Houser brothers have said they have “zero interest in turning any of their games into movies.” So it may be a non-starter, in any event.
Black’s campaign for a Red Dead movie has been going on for years, as he said in 2024 that he “can’t believe” there hasn’t been a Red Dead or GTA movie yet.
Rockstar parent company Take-Two’s CEO Strauss Zelnick has said the company would want to fund a potential GTA or Red Dead movie itself to avoid a situation where some other entity might get to call the creative shots.
“While we have the balance sheet to do it, we don’t have the corporate expertise to do it, because only a handful of people inside Take-Two have ever worked in that business. I’m one of them. But that’s not what we do for a living,” he said, referencing his previous experience as the president and CEO of movie studio 20th Century Fox in the early ’90s at the age of 32.
Another reason Take-Two might be hesitant about making more video game movies is that movies are largely not very profitable business endeavors to begin with. 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. was a massive commercial success with over $1 billion at the box office, but Zelnick said more often than not, video game movies fail and money is lost. A good example of that, and one that’s close to home for Take-Two, was the 2024 Borderlands, which, in addition to being a stinker critically, lost a huge amount of money, despite its star-studded cast (which also included Black) and big marketing push. Take-Two may not be sweating that too much, though, as Lionsgate funded the movie, not Take-Two or Borderlands developer Gearbox. There could be reputational damage, however.
As for video game movies that are very much real, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is in theaters now (featuring Black as Bowser), and it’s already breaking records at the box office. For more, check out a review of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie from a four-year-old.
