Radcliffe to shoot movie in the Cape

British actor Daniel Radcliffe. Photo: WILL OLIVER

British actor Daniel Radcliffe. Photo: WILL OLIVER

Published Apr 18, 2015

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Cape Town - Daniel Radcliffe, star of the Harry Potter films, will soon be in Cape Town to shoot a TV drama about the video game Grand Theft Auto.

Deadline Hollywood reported this week that Radcliffe would star opposite Bill Paxton in a new BBC Two TV drama about the rise of the popular video game franchise.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, shooting is set to begin later this month, with Owen Harris directing.

Radcliffe has been cast in the role of Sam Houser, co-founder and president of video game company Rockstar Games, which developed the GTA franchise that has sold million of games worldwide.

Paxton is set to play Jack Thompson, an outspoken and litigious US attorney who launched a crusade against violence in the franchise.

The first game was released in October 1997, and the latest, GTA V, was released to critical and commercial acclaim in 2013.

According to BBC Two, the 90-minute drama will tell the the story of how the game was conceived and created, as well as the groups that objected to its violent gameplay.

“Grand Theft Auto offered gamers the chance to step into a fantasy world where they could behave like criminals, gun down rival gangsters and cops, hijack cars and venture deeper into an imaginary American gangland underworld,” BBC Two said in a statement last month.

“But the violent gameplay coupled with its outstanding success led to fierce opposition: from parents worried about children immersing themselves in such a violent world; from politicians, alarmed at the values it encourages; and above all from moral-campaigners, who have fought passionately to stop it.”

While many of the cities in the franchise are in the US, the game was developed in the UK.

“Unlike many coding success stories, Grant Theft Auto was not created in Silicon Valley – it was the brainchild of a bunch of British gaming geniuses who had known each other since their school days.”

The BBC has chosen to use South Africa as a location for a number of its films and TV shoots in recent years.

These include Bluestone 42, a comedy series about a British bomb disposal unit, the mini-series Our Girl, about a young medic in Afghanistan, and the second season of the comedy caper The Wrong Mans.

Early this year, an episode of BBC’s crime procedural Wallender, starring Sir Kenneth Branagh, was also shot in the Mother City.

Weekend Argus

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