While AMC's Grand Theft Auto sounds like the best idea ever, the trailer was merely a cruel April Fool's prank. The original Grant Theft Auto was released in 1997 and was a top-down action game, where players raced across cities to commit various crimes and robberies. It was followed by a mission pack dubbed Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 and Grand Theft Auto 2 in 1999, but it was the next entry that would make GTA a powerhouse franchise.
Grand Theft Auto III arrived in 2001 and was the first entry in 3D. The game is considered a landmark in both the series and gaming and allowed players to run around a living, breathing world to do whatever they wished. The game attracted its share of controversy over its use of violence and sex, but it was a huge success. The series has continued to grow bigger and bigger ever since, with each new entry introducing a bigger sandbox to create havoc in, with 2013's Grand Theft Auto V being one of the best-selling video games of all time.
The history of live-action video game adaptations isn't the strongest, though TV shows like Netflix's Castlevania and The Witcher have shown its possible to make a good series that also feels like the source material. One franchise that's never made the leap, and likely never will, is Grand Theft Auto. For a brief, glorious moment in April 2017, it seemed like that had changed when a trailer arrived on IGN for AMC's Grand Theft Auto.
AMC's Grand Theft Auto trailer featured any number of car chases and Mexican standoffs, alongside a voice-over from Steven Ogg (The Walking Dead), who played Trevor in Grand Theft Auto V. Considering it arrived on April 1st, 2017, it was quickly clear it wasn't the genuine article, however. The trailer was actually produced by gaming site IGN, who have an annual tradition of elaborate April's Fools gags, like the trailer for fake Netflix series Star Wars: Fury Of Maul in 2016.
While a live-action Grand Theft Auto movie or TV show may sound like an exciting prospect, it would be pretty tough to recapture the exhilarating freedom the games offer. The appeal of Grand Theft Auto is its openness and options, which wouldn't translate very well to a structured narrative. That said, if anybody could pull it off it would be AMC, the network behind Breaking Bad and Mad Men. Well that's always a chance a Grand Theft Auto movie or show could happen, fans shouldn't expect to see it anytime soon.