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As one of the biggest video game franchises of all time, it’s pretty surprising that Grand Theft Auto has never turned into a movie. Warcraft, Uncharted, Resident Evil, and Tomb Raider are all examples of success stories over the years. But you might not know that GTA had the opportunity to become a movie at one point, with Eminem in talks to star in it. However, plans didn’t quite align.

During an appearance on Bugzy Malone’s Grandest Game podcast, Kirk Ewing, a friend of GTA creators Sam and Dan Houser, opened up about the failed project. Following the release of Grand Theft Auto III in 2001, Ewing was pitched the idea of a film by a Hollywood agent. At the time, Eminem was riding high off the back of his 2000 album, The Marshall Mathers LP.

The Grand Theft Auto creators were offered $5million for the rights to the film, which would have been handled by Top Gun director Tony Scott, with Marshall Mathers on board as the movie’s star. Ultimately, they turned down the deal despite wrestling with the idea of taking things to the big screen.

“[The agent] said: ‘Kirk, we’ve got Eminem to star, and it’s a Tony Scott film. $5million on the nose. Are you interested?’” Ewing recalled. “And I phoned up Sam and I said: ‘Listen to this. They want Eminem in the Grand Theft Auto movie and Tony Scott to direct.’ And he said: ‘Not interested’ … They realised that the media franchise that they had was bigger than any movie that was going on at the time.”

Eminem’s biggest movie moment of his career was 8 Mile in 2002, a semi-autobiographical film about B-Rabbit, a Detroit rapper attempting to launch a career in hip-hop. Other roles include 2009’s Funny People and 2014’s The Interview, with the rapper set to appear in the upcoming Happy Gilmore sequel. If the Grand Theft Auto movie had gone ahead, Em might have had an even bigger career as an actor.

Although Slim Shady didn’t enter the GTA universe, his mentor, Dr Dre, joined forces with the franchise in 2021 on DLC titled The Contract for Grand Theft Auto: Online. The NWA legend starred in the game alongside Jimmy Iovine, DJ Pooh and Anderson Paak, with the mission taking players on a journey to retrieve Dre’s stolen phone.

Dre also contributed new music to the game, which featured Eminem on a song called ‘Gospel‘. Snoop Dogg, Rick Ross, Busta Rhymes, Ty Dolla $ign and the late Nipsey Hussle were also part of Dre’s care package. Despite his association with GTA, he was allegedly clueless about the game beforehand.

“[Dre] had no idea what [Grand Theft Auto] was about because he’s not a gamer at all,” Pooh told Rolling Stone. “He never played them. But he was blown away [by] how deep you can get into the whole thing. He’s like, ‘Oh shit!’”

Rob Nelson, the co-studio head of Rockstar North, added, “We’ve wanted to do something with Dre for a while. When he’s not releasing music that regularly, it’s a pretty special thing to be able to get music from him, never mind exclusive music. Once we started talking, he started firing demos over — ‘Check this out, check this out, I did this with so-and-so.’ That was a pretty surreal experience.”