A Red Dead Redemption Film Should Not Be Based On The Games

Despite the huge, critically acclaimed success of the Red Dead Redemption series, there has seemingly been no serious attempt to adapt the franchise for a movie or a television series. Furthermore, there haven’t been many rumors about the future possibility of an adaptation. Take Two’s CEO remarked that he didn’t see a Red Dead Redemption adaptation coming anytime soon. The lead protagonist of Red Dead Redemption 2, Arthur Morgan’s voice actor and motion capture performance artist, Roger Clarke, also stated at Florida Supercon 2024, that while he was working for Rockstar they always said the same thing, “We don’t make TV shows, we make video games.”

Due to the current landscape of TV and film seeing more and more video game adaptations due to recent successes like HBO’s The Last of Us, it is surprising that everyone is seemingly in agreement with not adapting Red Dead Redemption. It makes sense from any potential studio’s perspective to adapt the most successful games, as they have the largest audience that would be inclined to view them. However, there are a lot of reasons why adapting the Red Dead franchise series doesn’t make sense on paper. Most crucially being the runtime of the games. Because both the games are open-world RPGs, the narrative has a very varied runtime. Some players will skip all optional missions and side quests, whereas others will take their time exploring the open world, hunting animals, doing collectible challenges and more. In the case of Red Dead Redemption 2, the rough run time of just the campaign itself is roughly 60 hours long. So, even if Rockstar decided to adapt to a television series rather than a movie, it would be a near impossible task to adapt the narrative of the game.

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So What Can Be Adapted In A Red Dead Redemption Film?

Some fans would argue not to bother trying if there’s no strong reason to do so. The Red Dead Redemption series had a very strong emotional impact on players, and fans are very protective of it. Video game adaptations have famously let fans of the games down by creating unfaithful adaptations that don’t show much respect or understanding for the source material. However, if a Red Dead Redemption film were to tell a story not told in the game, they would avoid the risk of letting fans down. Whatever studio decides to take on the task could also create a narrative designed for a movie format, so they don’t have to sacrifice quality in order to cram everything into a two-hour movie.

The cowboy western film genre is one of the oldest and most popular in cinema history, and even in recent years, it’s seen commercial success in Hollywood (Django Unchained, No Country For Old Men). So there is clearly still an audience for the genre, and a relatively unexplored genre in the case of video game adaptations. While it doesn’t make sense to directly adapt the narrative of the Red Dead games, there are potential storylines that are teased in the games that a movie could explore.

Option One: The Red Dead Redemption Gang’s Early Days

Even in the relatively peaceful opening chapters of Red Dead Redemption 2, the core members of the gang (Dutch, Hosea, Arthur, and John) all look back at their early days with a heavily rose-tinted lens. With only four members of the ‘old guard’, as Dutch refers to them, the gang functioned much more like a family than a tribe of outlaws, with Dutch and Hosea even going as far as teaching Arthur and John how to read and write (a rarity at the time).

Despite these times being implied to be much less dramatic than the events of the game, it is also assumed that the gang still faced a lot of issues with the law and, of course, the O’Driscolls. These events could make up the story for a potential adaptation. The characters in the game constantly state that they’ve “been through worse than this,” and Arthur once states, “… Before, put enough time and distance between you and the problem. Eventually, it went away.” This quote alone could give a potential studio the allowance to create an action movie with high stakes and even punishing consequences for the characters without disturbing the canon established in the game series.

This hypothetical movie would naturally be set in the West, as that is where the gang is fleeing from at the start of Red Dead 2. The time period would likely be somewhere in the 1880s, before it’s assumed the rest of the gang joined. The audience would get a look at a younger and more untamed version of the old guard in a classic Western desert landscape. The movie could also feature events that the games make reference to, like Arthur’s first bank heist, which he kept a newspaper scrap of, as memorabilia, or the origin of the feud between the gang and the O’Driscolls.

Option Two: Sadie Adler’s South American Adventure

In the very final mission of Red Dead Redemption 2, “American Venom,” John, Sadie, and Charles ride into the mountains to find Micah and get revenge for his betraying the gang. During their ride into the mountains, Sadie and Charles both discuss the possibility of leaving America for other pursuits. Charles mentions the idea of traveling to Canada and starting a family there. As wholesome as this sounds and is most likely the ending fans would have wanted for Charles, it doesn’t feel like there’s any potential to tell a story there.

However, Sadie’s plans had much more potential for adventure. She mentions either running protection for a gold mine or taking up with a handsome revolutionary. Sadie had one of the most interesting character developments in the game series, yet it still felt like there was more of her character that could have been explored. In the first half of the game, Sadie is mourning her husband—who was murdered at the hands of the O’Driscolls—so it’s not until the final stage of the game and the epilogue that the player gets to see her fully realized as a merciless and proficient bounty hunter.

Sadie was certainly a fan-favorite character, with some asking for a DLC where they’d get to play her as the main protagonist. However, at this stage, it seems Rockstar has all their attention on the upcoming release of GTAVI, so perhaps this is something a studio could explore in the form of a movie adaptation instead. “Taking up with a handsome revolutionary” suggests that Sadie has had enough time to heal from the tragic loss of her husband to consider seeking another romantic partner. Perhaps this love interest could be partnered in crime with Sadie and her private gun-for-hire business, giving audiences a Bonnie and Clyde-style action narrative in a new setting with a character they already know and love.

Option Three: Jack Marston’s Life As An Outlaw

In the epilogue of Red Dead Redemption, Jack Marston does exactly what his mother fought to avoid for him and follows in his father’s footsteps as an outlaw. He exacts revenge by besting Agent Ross in a duel after Ross betrays and kills his father, John Marston. After exacting revenge, Jack solemnly looks down at his gun with some regret and flees the scene. The player can continue free-roaming as Jack for as long as they’d like, but outside this final scene, he doesn’t receive any further missions that develop his character.

It’s uncertain how long Jack Marston proceeded with his life as an outlaw. He achieved his goal of exacting revenge, but to do so, he had to kill a celebrated government agent, so it would be very difficult for him to return to living an honest life. The game’s epilogue is said to take place in the year 1914, which is a long time since the golden age of gunslingers and outlaws. So any potential story around Jack Marston would likely focus on his struggle as the last of a dying breed, perhaps being hunted by the government after killing Ross.

Interestingly, there is an Easter egg in GTAV that gives insight into Jack’s life after the events of Red Dead. In Franklin’s Vinewood Hills house, on a bookshelf, there is a blue book titled “Red Dead” published by J. Marston. This is almost certainly Jack Marston rather than John, as Jack had often said he wanted to be a writer. This implies a few things. The first is that Jack lived long enough to see him become a published author after the events of the game, and the second is that perhaps Jack had further ventures as an outlaw, which he then wrote about. This is not confirmed as canon, and the book could also be related to the events of the game that Jack witnessed in his childhood, but it’s up to the interpretation of fans.

A film adaptation of a book found in a completely separate video game would be very meta, but there are a lot of directions a studio could go in when adapting the Red Dead Redemption series for the big screen. But out of respect to the story of the games and how Rockstar was able to masterfully tell it through the immersive storytelling device of the video game medium, any potential movie should explore a story set outside the games’ narrative.

Released

October 26, 2018

ESRB

M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Use of Drugs and Alcohol