Grand Theft Auto: TV

It looks likely that Rockstar is planning some sort of TV spin off from its rudely successful Grand Theft Auto franchise, with a report cropping up in the Hollywood press hinting towards the somewhat belated wringing of the franchise for the extra dollars it doubtlessly contains.

With several movies rumoured to be underway, Variety Magazine claims Spike TV will be airing a live-action take on the headline-greedy series. “Spike's already working overtime to find the follow-up to "Blade." Exec VP of original series Pancho Mansfield, whom Herzog enlisted to establish Spike's scripted biz, is developing more than a dozen shows from such heavy hitters as Frank Spotnitz, Vince Gilligan and Denis Leary,” reports Variety in its usual up all night on the lager style. Then it quite amazingly states, “Among the projects are a sort of live-action take on the vidgame "Grand Theft Auto" and a mini about a mysterious illness that overruns Los Angeles.”

Exactly what a 'sort of live-action take' is remains to be seen, though Spike in known for putting out edgy productions, with 'The Shield' currently stirring up the kind of moral majority backlash so long the reserve of the Take-2 delinquent.

It is likely that we'll see a lot more Grand Theft Auto media-melding in the coming months, with various industry wags noting recently that Rockstar does see massive untapped profit in the chart-smashing romps. You might remember that Ain't It Cool News (having well and truly lost the smash and grab ethos that really marked the site as a true Internet journalistic pioneer) ran a story back in mid-2004 that claimed a movie based on the San Andreas property was at drawing board stage. The story was quickly killed and the site pulled the piece – nothing was heard thereafter.

There's certainly something brewing. We'll find out what, and let you know.