“There would be fights in the crowd, there were prostitutes… it was really quite dirty, the opposite of high culture,” Sam adds. “That’s exactly the world of GTA Online.”
The film sees Sam and Mark scour Los Santos to find players willing to help with the production while struggling with real-life issues at home during the UK’s third lockdown. Sam and Pinny have two children to raise and find themselves spending an inordinate amount of time online, and when their lead actor lands a new job and bows out, they’re forced to make a last-minute pivot that changes everything.
It’s a chaotic journey full of obstacles and setbacks (the existential underpinnings of “To be or not to be” ring truer and truer as the film unfolds). But Sam and Mark’s commitment to presenting Shakespeare with sincerity and integrity holds strong amid the mayhem, and the tight bond they forge with their cast of nervous first-time actors is the beating heart of the film. With all odds against them, the motley crew manages to create one of the most bizarrely wholesome moments in modern gaming history.
“Rockstar knows about what we’re doing, and they’re really excited about it,” Pinny shares. “They didn’t really understand what we were doing at first, but then they saw the film, and they loved it.”
Sam and Pinny can hardly wait until the arrival of Grand Theft Auto VI in 2025, though when asked if they would welcome support features for performance artists like themselves in the game’s online incarnation, they’re surprisingly disinclined.
“The limitations we were faced with brought out our creativity,” Sam explains. “You wouldn’t want it to be too easy.”
