Shakespeare's Hamlet played inside GTA Online receives high praise

Grand Theft Hamlet, shot entirely inside GTA Online by two out-of-work actors during the COVID pandemic, has turned out to be a huge success with a 94% rating on rotten tomatoes. As the name suggests, the actors are trying to enact Shakespeare's Hamlet in the midst of the digital world of GTA Online.

The signs were already there, as Grand Theft Hamlet was recently nominated and won the BIFA Raindance Maverick Award 2024. It captures the hilarious yet taxing attempt to perform Hamlet in the game, where nothing ever goes the right way. Despite that, the actors did it.

First premiering at the 2024 SXSW Film Festival, the movie has made its way into various theatres across the United Kingdom. In a recent interview, the actors Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen revealed that the idea came on a whim, and they rolled with it. During the process, they recorded hundreds of hours of gameplay footage of their attempt.

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Performing Hamlet inside GTA Online was a huge challenge

As one would expect, performing an act in front of an audience isn’t an easy task. On stage, people would boo and throw stuff if the performance wasn’t up to par. In GTA Online, people just didn’t care. Oftentimes they were griefed and blown up in broad daylight (inside the game), making performing much more challenging.

“It feels like I went back in time to the Globe 500 years ago where people would just throw apples at you or there were prostitutes coming and going, and people were selling stuff. The theatre in Shakespeare's time was like that. It was popular entertainment. It wasn't a dark room where everyone had to be quiet,” Grylls said.