April Fools’ brought us an inspired if not easily decipherable Grand Theft Auto television show trailer thanks to the folks at IGN.
Beware, people of the internet, it’s April Fool’s Day today. That means mostly anything major that you see as far as announcements that seem out of the blue are probably not real. The University of Minnesota released information that they were changing their classic school logo to an emoji letter, one of many April Fools’ jokes being spread about social media.
One of the more inspired gags is a trailer for an upcoming adaptation of Grand Theft Auto which got everyone who saw the headline buzzing.
All credit here goes to whatever brilliant mind at IGN cooked this idea up. Seriously, I love a good troll and this is an all-timer in my book. It even had me going for a minute, since the idea of a GTA television series makes too much sense to never happen. It was a perfect set up, although the delivery slowly made it apparent this was an April Fools’ joke.
First off, a GTA television series is bound to happen at some point, especially in this age of anthology seasons where nothing has to be connected. Further nailing the sales pitch is the notion that AMC is airing the series, something you could totally see them doing.
Here’s the trailer for the “show” below:
It’s an inspired idea for an April Fools’ joke but there were some telltale signs that this was a troll.
- The budget looks like it was about $80
- It wasn’t officially released by an AMC account
- Saying the creators of Breaking Bad worked on it was a hand tipping moment
Those signs aside, this was top notch. IGN has been in the business longer than just about anyone else and their troll game is Yoda-level strong. There are a lot of April Fools’ jokes floating around out there but few will so authentically have the desired effect than this “trailer” for a GTA series at AMC.
Bravo, IGN. Bravo.