At iicon on April 28, 2026, Variety's Jenny Maas asked Strauss Zelnick whether Take-Two Interactive was looking at doing more beyond Grand Theft Auto 6, particularly, with L.A. Noire. His response was a single word that caused an audible reaction in the room.
"Yes."
The Take-Two CEO then did what he always does, which is walk it back just far enough to avoid a commitment while leaving the door wide open.
You never know. Broadly, we're looking at doing something in the future with all of our intellectual property. There's nothing to announce on L.A. Noire specifically, and if there were, it would be Rockstar announcing it, not me. But in any case, with regard to our legacy IP, the teams are always looking at what we have and we're always thinking about it. The question is, at any given time, do we have a team that's passionate about working on that?
We have already covered Zelnick's pricing comments, his "terrified" admission about measuring success, and his confirmation that marketing starts "soon", but the legacy-franchise discussion deserves attention too. It gives fans of Rockstar's games beyond Grand Theft Auto a reason to think about what could come next.
Rockstar Games has put years of work into GTA 6, with Rockstar North leading development. The scale of the project has fuelled reports of a $3 billion budget, although Rockstar has not published that figure. Its Madrid job listing concerns regional communications and marketing, not a new game-development assignment.
That makes the legacy-IP discussion interesting: Rockstar has a library of games that fans would love to see return. Alongside the discussion of whether GTA 6 is nearing completion, Zelnick's answer raises a different question: which older franchise could attract a team eager to revive it? His comments leave room for that possibility without announcing a project or a development schedule.
Rockstar Franchise Revival Outlook
Franchise | Selected Release | Original / Re-release Year | Developer | Status | Revival Outlook (Editorial Assessment) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
L.A. Noire | L.A. Noire (remastered 2017) | 2011 (original) | Team Bondi (original); Video Games Deluxe (2017 work) | Dormant | Moderate: Zelnick said "yes" when asked |
Bully | Bully | 2006 (original) | Rockstar Vancouver (closed 2012) | Dormant | Moderate: strong community demand; leaked development rumors in 2017 |
Manhunt | Manhunt 2 | 2007 | Rockstar London / Toronto | Dormant | Low: content too controversial for current climate; regulation risk |
Max Payne | Max Payne 3 | 2012 | Rockstar studios, including Vancouver and Toronto | In progress | Confirmed: Remedy Entertainment remaking Max Payne 1 and 2 |
Midnight Club | Midnight Club: Los Angeles | 2008 | Rockstar San Diego | Dormant | Low-Moderate: racing market saturated; no public signals |
The Warriors | The Warriors | 2005 | Rockstar Toronto | Dormant | Very low: IP may not justify investment |
Red Dead Redemption | Red Dead Redemption (2023 re-release) | 2023 (re-release) | Double Eleven / Rockstar Games | Active but no sequel announced | High: franchise too valuable to abandon; RDR3 widely expected post-GTA 6 |
Table Tennis | Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis | 2006 | Rockstar San Diego | Dormant | Very low |
Agent | Never released | Named announcement in 2009; unreleased | Rockstar North | Canceled | None |
Selected Rockstar franchises and our assessment of their prospects at the time of Zelnick's comments.
As you can see, Rockstar is sitting on as many as eight dormant or semi-active franchises. Several outlived their original studios. Team Bondi, which built L.A. Noire, collapsed after the game's release amid reports of severe crunch and mismanagement. Its founder, Brendan McNamara, later founded Video Games Deluxe, the separate studio Rockstar acquired and renamed Rockstar Australia. Rockstar Vancouver, which worked on Bully and Max Payne 3, was consolidated into Rockstar Toronto in 2012, with its staff offered positions there or at other Rockstar studios. A revival of L.A. Noire or Bully would require a development team, but Zelnick did not announce who would make either game.
The Max Payne situation shows one way an older franchise can return. Remedy Entertainment, which created the original Max Payne and Max Payne 2, is developing a combined remake of both games, with Rockstar financing and publishing it. That arrangement puts the remakes in the original developer's hands; it is not an announcement of Max Payne 4 or a template confirmed for every other Rockstar franchise.
For L.A. Noire, the appeal is easy to understand. Another game could revisit detective work, interrogation and the period setting that made the original distinctive. Zelnick's answer keeps that possibility alive, but he did not specify whether a return would be a sequel, remake or another kind of project.
The qualification about passion is the detail worth paying attention to. "The question is, at any given time, do we have a team that's passionate about working on that?" He described enthusiasm within a development team as an important consideration, rather than promising that every dormant franchise would get another game.
That emphasis fits a company whose creative ambitions have produced some of the best games ever made. It also explains why a familiar name and an eager audience are only part of the case for bringing a series back.
With that said, GTA 6 is scheduled to launch on November 19, 2026. Rockstar also continues to support Grand Theft Auto Online. Neither commitment establishes the earliest date another project could begin, and Zelnick did not give a release window for a legacy-IP revival.
The encouraging part for fans is that these older games remain part of the conversation. L.A. Noire, Bully and the other series offer very different experiences from GTA: detective work, schoolyard mischief, racing and more. A return to one of them could give Rockstar room to explore something its biggest franchise does not.
The GTA 6 launch will define the decade for Rockstar. Zelnick's comments are a reminder that the company has more to draw on than that one series. The next step worth watching is whether a team turns that interest into a game.