Grand Theft Hamlet, a brand new documentary filmed solely inside Grand Theft Auto 5, is coming quickly to a display close to you. Directed by Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls, the movie follows a duo of struggling actors as they try and stage a manufacturing of Shakespeare’s Hamlet throughout the center of the COVID pandemic.
The movie consists of nothing however in-game footage from Rockstar’s award-winning 2013 basic, and curiously sufficient, it is profitable awards, too. Grand Theft Hamlet gained this yr’s documentary movie competitors at SXSW and has been (*5*) all through its movie pageant run. The 89-minute genre-bending flick is about to reach on the Mubi streaming service someday in 2025. Mubi has additionally acknowledged that the movie may have a theatrical launch.
An progressive, immersive tackle Shakespeare’s Hamlet, shot solely contained in the world of Grand Theft Auto, Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane’s pageant hit GRAND THEFT HAMLET is coming quickly to US theaters + streaming globally. pic.twitter.com/6FMYCt5423
— MUBI (@mubi) October 10, 2024
“It’s January 2021. The UK has simply entered its third lockdown and all theatres stay closed. For actors Sam and Mark, the long run seems bleak,” reads the film’s official website. “Because the pandemic drags on Mark who lives alone is more and more socially remoted, whereas Sam is panicking about how he’s going to assist his household. They channel their midlife frustrations by immersing their avatars within the horrifically violent but fantastically rendered digital world of Grand Theft Auto On-line. They steal vehicles and shoot strangers, but additionally discover moments of calm reflection strolling by meadows of wildflowers. In one gaming session they stumble throughout a theatre and have an thought. Why not stage Hamlet inside the sport?”
“[Grand Theft Hamlet is] groundbreaking and necessary–especially at a time when increasingly of our lives (even a cultural artefact as historical as reside theatre) transfer on-line,” the movie’s creators shared in a press release on its web site. “The documentary asks what is that this area? How can we use it now and what else is feasible inside it? Can we transport this historical story inside a model new one? And will it nonetheless make sense? The cinematic potential of Los Santos is instantly obvious, with its glittering, mind-blowingly detailed cityscape and surrounding countryside, the ray-traced rendering of sunshine, ever-changing climate programs and complicated sound design.”
So how, precisely, does one movie a feature-length documentary inside a online game? GTA 5’s in-game cellphone, naturally.
“By utilizing the in-game telephone digital camera we had been capable of get intimate shut ups and cinematic pans throughout landscapes–enabling a extra cinematic visible language and moments of pathos, emotion, and lyricism to exist inside the chaos and violence of this undiscovered nation,” Crane and Gyllis defined.
Mubi has not introduced a selected launch date, although it has confirmed the movie will arrive on the streaming platform and in theaters early subsequent yr. In the meantime, Grand Theft Hamlet’s U.K. film premiere is about for October 15, with one other exhibiting on October 20.
GTA 5 developer Rockstar Video games has but to touch upon the documentary.