Shakespeare in GTA: "Grand Theft Hamlet" Flips Classics

Imagine watching Shakespeare's classic Hamlet when, out of nowhere, the audience member next to you is blasted away by a rocket launcher. Before you can even ponder the existential question, "To be or not to be," they’ve already been reduced to dust. Moments later, a naked alien picks its nose and mutters, "Give me drugs."

This isn’t a parody—it’s a serious performance of Hamlet, set in the virtual world of the game Grand Theft Auto V. Directed by British filmmakers Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane, Grand Theft Hamlet explores the challenge of presenting Shakespeare’s classic tragedy in the chaotic and violent world of a virtual game. Since premiering at the 2024 South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival, it has garnered rave reviews and boasts a 94% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Grand Theft Hamlet is distributed in North America by the art film streaming platform MUBI, a noteworthy endorsement for the film. (Source: MUBI)

A Pandemic-Era Gaming Mishap Turns into an Opportunity

As discussed in Knit's Island, a film set in the post-apocalyptic zombie game DayZ, Grand Theft Hamlet also arose from the stagnation and monotony of the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of the directors, Sam Crane, a stage actor, found himself unemployed during the pandemic. While playing Grand Theft Auto, his character killed a casino employee and escaped to an amphitheater. There, something unexpected occurred: his game character began reciting Macbeth’s famous soliloquy—"Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more..."—before being killed by another player’s character.

This surprising twist sparked an idea: why not stage a Shakespeare play within Grand Theft Auto? His partner, Pinny Grylls, a documentary filmmaker, observed that rehearsing in a virtual gaming environment could be as unpredictable and dramatic as real-life rehearsals, if not more so. She then began documenting Sam Crane’s interactions as he performed Shakespeare within the game.

Grand Theft Hamlet emerged during the pandemic as a burst of creativity born under pressure. (Source: MUBI)

Unexpectedly Shakespearean with a Cultural Touch

"The themes in the game are revenge and power and people pretending to be things they’re not. That really is in that game, and I’m not sure it exists that way in any other games," Sam Crane explained in an IndieWire interview. He discussed how Grand Theft Auto unexpectedly became his stage for Hamlet: both explore revenge and feature actors embodying different characters. Additionally, Grand Theft Auto’s visual effects and frequent updates make it suitable for producing watchable footage, with fewer game bugs improving feasibility.

More importantly, "I think the other thing about it that’s really important is it has this massive cultural resonance. Everyone knows what ‘GTA’ is. Even if you’ve never played it, you’ve got an idea of what it is or what you think it is.And the amazing thing is that it can surprise you a bit, which is what I hope this film does for some people."—like with rocket launchers or naked aliens.

This quirky effect of NPCs and other players "crashing" the performance is reminiscent of Log In to the End Times, where an interview unfolded against the backdrop of zombie bashing, or We Met in Virtual Reality, which captured unexpected encounters in virtual worlds.

Games like DayZ, VRChat, and Grand Theft Auto have a unique quality: they recreate the tension between audience and actors in a theater, where there’s always an expectation that someone in the "room" might disrupt the performance. Sam Crane observed, " the tension that exists between audiences and actors who understand that anyone in the room could derail the performance at any time."

This raises an intriguing question: if AI agents were introduced as NPCs in online games—performing The Legend of Zhen Huan or Dream of the Red Chamber in Minecraft—would they faithfully recreate the classics, or would they "mod" them into new interpretations? Could such adaptations be considered experimental theater? Is AI-generated content fundamentally different from modern interpretations of classics, such as Shakespeare’s plays adapted across cultures, ethnicities, and media? And what role do humans play in these works?