A documentary made entirely inside Grand Theft Auto Online is coming to theaters next year, and it is about…making a production of Hamlet inside of GTA Online.
Fittingly called Grand Theft Hamlet, distributor Mubi (recently known for The Substance) picked up the movie’s US and global SVOD rights. Per the Hollywood Reporter, Mubi intends to release Grand Theft Hamlet in early 2025 in the US, preceded by a festival run this month in the UK.
Grand Theft Hamlet follows a pair of actors who were left unemployed by the COVID-19 in 2021. While isolated, they opt to make the classic Shakespeare play inside of Rockstar’s popular live-service crime game.
The film premiered at South by Southwest earlier this year and received glowing reviews, and took home the festival’s Documentary Feature Jury Award. It’s taken on numerous other accolades during its festival run.
Machinima lives again
Grand Theft Hamlet continues the art form of machinima, or using video game footage to create a narrative film or TV show.
The most popular of example of this is Red vs. Blue, the webseries from the now defunct Rooster Teeth Productions. Across that show’s run, it was made using every mainline Halo game (and some remasters), the 2010 spinoff Halo Reach, and Bungie’s Marathon trilogy.
Even before Halo 3 featured in-game recording to make the process easier for filmmakers, the series was often used for machinma. Over the years, other web series and films were made in non-Halo games, like Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell series, Half-Life 2, Quake, and World of Warcraft.
Some TV shows like South Park or CSI have also used machinima for episodes, though those examples are much smaller than actual machinima.