Here’s Everything We Know About Grand Theft Hamlet
Something is rotten in Los Santos.
To be or not to be? That is a question you probably don’t expect to hear in Grand Theft Auto Online. And yet, here we are. Grand Theft Hamlet attempts to merge the worlds of theatrical Shakespeare and video games in an unprecedented way. Shot on a shoestring budget, Grand Theft Hamlet is a machinima film (one that uses footage recorded inside a video game) centering on what may be the most bizarre production of Hamlet ever staged.
Following an acclaimed festival debut and a successful launch in UK cinemas, Grand Theft Hamlet is set to bring its unique melding of theater and gaming to theaters in the US and begin streaming around the world. Here’s when you’ll be able to watch Grand Theft Hamlet — and what the heck it even is.
Grand Theft Hamlet chronicles the monumental task of staging a play inside GTA Online.
When is the Grand Theft Hamlet release date?
Grand Theft Hamlet premiered at the 2024 SXSW Film Festival before appearing at the London Film Festival in October and being theatrically released in the UK on December 6. For most audiences, though, the first chance to see the film will be in early 2025. Grand Theft Hamlet debuts in theaters in the U.S. and begins streaming on Mubi worldwide on January 17, 2025.
What is the plot of Grand Theft Hamlet?
Grand Theft Hamlet is a documentary about actors Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen staging a production of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet entirely inside GTA Online. During the 2021 lockdowns in the UK, Crane and Oosterveen were unable to work in traditional film or theater productions, and came up with the idea to perform the show inside GTA Online after playing the game together.
The film follows their attempts to cast fellow GTA Online players as actors and put on the play while dealing with complications arising from the game’s limitations — and hostile players’ attempts to violently derail it. The entirety of Grand Theft Hamlet is made up of footage recorded in GTA Online.
Is there a Grand Theft Hamlet trailer?
Mubi released a trailer for Grand Theft Hamlet in December ahead of the film’s US release. Like the documentary itself, the trailer consists of footage from GTA Online. In the trailer, Crane and Oosterveens’ attempt to convince other players to audition for the play, first meeting with violent resistance and eventually culminating in casting and producing the play.
GTA Online players are about as eager as you’d expect to derail Grand Theft Hamlet in the documentary’s trailer.
Who is in the cast and crew of Grand Theft Hamlet?
One of the documentary’s subjects, Crane, co-directed Grand Theft Hamlet along with Pinny Grylls, to whom he is married. Grylls herself is an award-winning documentary filmmaker. Aside from Crane and Oosterveen, the rest of the film’s cast consists entirely of players in GTA Online, who are only seen as their in-game avatars.
What have critics said about Grand Theft Hamlet?
The reception to Grand Theft Hamlet so far has been extremely positive. For its debut at the 2024 SXSW Film Festival, Grand Theft Hamlet won the Jury Award for best documentary feature. At the British Independent Film Awards in December, Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls won for Best Debut Director of a feature documentary, and the film itself took home the Raindance Maverick Award, described by the festival’s founders as an award honoring “creative, cash-conscious and risk-taking filmmakers.”
Following the film’s UK release, reviews were almost universally positive.
