Rockstar reportedly declined to make a Grand Theft Auto movie that could’ve starred the world-famous rapper, Eminem. The late Top Gun director Tony Scott was also reportedly considered to direct it.
On the Bugzy Malone podcast, Earthworm Jim director Kirk Ewing said that he spoke with Rockstar’s Sam Houser in his hotel room one night about making a GTA film.
Ewing explained: “This was just after Grand Theft Auto 3. And I think, at that point, it was still in Sam’s mind that it might be something that he wanted to do … I remember taking a call at about 4 a.m. from one of the producers in LA with an offer to make a film. And he said, ‘Kirk, we’ve got Eminem to star, and it’s a Tony Scott film, $5 million on the nose, are you interested?’”
When Ewing called Houser to deliver the news, Houser reportedly turned it down and said that he was not interested.
Ewing added: “At that point, they withdrew from any conversation about making a film when they realized that the media franchise that they had was bigger than any movie that was going on at the time.”
While an actual GTA-based movie never materialized, the BBC released a trailer for a GTA documentary in 2015 about the franchise’s success over Rockstar’s objection. The company sued the BBC in order to protect its IP.
Movie adaptations for video games have recently gained popularity, as Sony has been greenlighting them with its own properties like Uncharted, Gran Turismo, and Ghost of Tsushima.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.