Rockstar Games turned down the chance to launch a Grand Theft Auto movie starring Eminem, a new podcast claims.

Games industry veteran Kirk Ewing, a friend of GTA creators Sam and Dan Houser, says a Hollywood agent came to him with the deal.

He says the brothers were offered $5m for rights to a movie starring the rapper by Top Gun director Tony Scott.

But, Kirk tells BBC podcast Bugzy Malone’s Grandest Game, Sam Houser told the agent they were “not interested”.

Kirk, whose game State of Emergency was released by Rockstar, says the Housers had been talking about a movie tie-in around the time GTA 3 took the world by storm.

Released in 2001 on Playstation 2, the pioneering title laid the groundwork for the rest of the series and the imitators that would follow.

In the same year, Eminem was flying high off the back of his record-breaking Marshall Mathers LP.

He had also just wrapped shooting on his starring role in 8 Mile – a semi-biographical film loosely based on his early steps into rap.