GameCulture Exclusive: Mark Neveldine on How GAMER Started as a GTA Movie

The guys behind Lionsgate Entertainment’s GAMER, which just launched on Blu-ray Disc and DVD, have a videogame history beyond the Crank films. Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, who co-wrote and co-directed all three films, also worked on a concept for a Grand Theft Auto videogame movie after Crank became a breakout international hit. Neveldine talks about his own gaming background and divulges why GTA hasn’t yet made it to the big screen in this exclusive interview.

What videogames did you play growing up?

I played, Pac-man, Asteroids, Sinistar. Sinistar was my favorite game.

Have you stuck with games over the years?

I didn’t stick with it. Towards the end of Atari and Nintendo Super Mario Bros. I was a player and that was it. I didn’t follow it. My brother did, but I didn’t. He is a radiologist and he looks at 100,000 images a day and plays videogames all night.

Can you talk about how you got involved in a film that immerse the audience in a future videogame culture?

Yeah. It is kind of funny, we had this thought about live human videogames after watching reality TV and people wanting to be so involved in other people’s lives. I thought maybe it’s just not going to stop and we are going to get to the point we do in the film. I mean we are already manipulating people and if given the chance, we want to control people and maybe just take that leap and get to that world (in film) where that is happening. And we had some influences -- studios, the Internet, reading certain things about the end of the world and the age of technology  and that stuff. At the end of the day it was a movie we wanted to be a little bit of warning, but mostly have fun and get off on the violence and menace of it all. 

Did you go back and research what they are doing today with videogames for this?

Well, we did, I mean we played some games. We actually were going to be hired to write GTA. I am sure that was part of it. That was after we wrote and directed Crank, so I got involved with GTA pretty heavily, I didn’t grow up with it. I came back and dove in…like when you don’t watch TV for three weeks, then when you do you watch it for 24 hours straight. I was playing GTA from the first game to the latest edition all the way through. That was a big part of my research and going online and joining Second Life and creating a character, which is a big part of GAMER. 

What happened to the GTA movie?

There is a rights issue. It was a movie originally directed by Ron Howard. And because RockStar games made a videogame, there is some battle of who can use the title. You can’t make it about the game. It got to be a headache and we said we would rather not get involved in it. I think someone ended up writing some version of it to re-make the movie, but that isn’t our interest, ours was bringing a videogame to life.

Did you get as far as writing anything for GTA?

Not anything that is out there, but certainly we put together quite a bit and we got a PS3 and dove in pretty heavy for many weeks and had some fun.

When you watch Crank it plays like a videogame, which is interesting since you did that movie before your GTA research.

Everybody always said that Crank is like GTA: The Movie. And it’s funny because I hadn’t played GTA at that point. Crank was just all of our immaturity and anxiety smashed into one movie. It was about me and Brian running around LA trying to stay alive…that movie was more about anxiety than anything else.

If you play GTA a certain way it can be an ultra-violent game. How did that influence GAMER?

It is kind of a scary thing. It’s a big reason I enjoyed writing the movie and making it, because it is scary how far people take these games and how much time they spend on the Internet playing games. It is something I try to avoid. At times, I get sucked into the Internet when I am doing research and I have to, but for the most part it gets under my skin. I wish it would be more of a balance for some people.  I think videogames run their lives and this is me saying people are doing that to the extreme.

Was there any talk about releasing a videogame tied into GAMER along with the movie?

Yeah, there was, but it was a tough thing. It takes so long. Everyone says there was some talk about doing a Crank videogame. There was a little version where you could play the Crank film game, but to do a real game it takes so much time to develop it and I think you couldn’t get ready in time, and it wasn’t our interest. We have no idea how to come up with something to be turned into a videogame. If they want that, that’s great. We all are all for it.