GTA 6's Only Competition For Lifetime Sales Is The Bible, TLOU Showrunner Says

Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto VI is poised to be 2025's biggest new game release, and so far we've heard sales projections of 40 million copies in the first year and $3 billion in revenue. Only one piece of work in history may end up outperforming it, according to Hollywood veteran Craig Mazin--the Bible.

Speaking to Variety, Mazin said he expects GTA 6 to become the "largest-selling piece of media ever," with the exception of the Bible. As such, he expects Hollywood to "very carefully" watch how the game performs.

It's unknown how many copies of the Bible have been produced, but estimates suggest it could be as many as 7 billion. Obviously, GTA 6 is not going to sell 7 billion copies. But the point Mazin is making is that he expects Rockstar to once again deliver a product in GTA 6 that smashes records and raises the bar.

"People are getting used to an interesting combination of handmade, super-attentive method of making things married to size, which again, makes things harder to do," he said. "And as the bar is raised with production, and as every episode starts to approach movie quality and movie intensity, it does take more time."

Mazin has worked in Hollywood for a long time and was best known for the Scary Movie and The Hangover franchises before a dramatic turn with HBO's Chernobyl and more recently The Last of Us.

Given the size and scale of the GTA franchise, many may wonder why there hasn't been a feature film or TV adaptation. To begin with, Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick says adaptations for film and TV simply do not make a lot of money, and he would know, as Zelnick was previously an executive at Columbia Pictures and 20th Century Fox. Zelnick said singling out success stories like HBO's The Last of Us and Universal's The Super Mario Bros. Movie misses the point of how there are countless stories of failures where people lost money. Given that, Take-Two has said it will be "very selective" when it comes to licensing its properties for film or TV.

Take-Two's Borderlands franchise received a feature film adaptation starring many famous Hollywood celebrities, but it tanked upon release in 2024, earning only $33 million worldwide. In fact, Mazin was originally involved with the Borderlands movie before parting ways, replaced by a writer named "Joe Crombie." Some people believe this person does not actually exist.

Lionsgate financed the Borderlands movie, so Take-Two and Gearbox are largely unaffected by the major miss, apart from reputational damage and the possibility of movie studios looking to steer clear of any future partnerships.

Another Take-Two franchise set for a Hollywood adaptation is BioShock, which is getting a movie at Netflix--however, the project has been scaled down.