This all turned into a big piece of news when renowned game industry insider Tom Henderson, who has provided accurate inside scoops about Battlefield, Call of Duty and GTA in the past, Tweeted a screenshot of Jackson’s Facebook post.
In said post, the voice actor claims to have been hired by Rockstar Games to play the role of police chief Captain McClane in the “new Grand Theft Auto series”. When reached out to for further comment, Jackson claimed he does not yet know specific details of the project he is working on, but a trailer is coming ‘very soon’. Voice actors being kept in the dark about their work is fairly common in order to prevent leaks - famously, the cast of Red Dead Redemption 2 had no idea what they were recording lines for even in the studio, until some of them pieced the details together from the script. Jackson not knowing what he’s working on - be it GTA Online DLC, GTA 6 or something else entirely - lines up with reality. Stock shouldn’t be put into the use of the word “series”, as a show clearly isn’t on the cards here. The most likely scenario in our opinion is that it is for some GTA Online DLC. McClane sounds like a reference to Die Hard, and in a game full of pop culture references this wouldn’t be at all surprising. The likelihood that the work relates to GTA 6 is next to none, as all credible industry insiders have pegged it for a 2023/2024 release, or even later. No game launching so far out is getting a trailer soon. GTA 5 Expanded and Enhanced, the Xbox Series X|S and PS5 port is another possibility, as it will launch with extra content. Many have called the truth of the claim into question entirely, alleging that Jackson has no involvement with the GTA franchise at all, and that this is a hoax. Other fans pointed out that if true, revealing the character’s name and an impending trailer is likely a breach of an NDA, so Rockstar might be breaking off the working relationship with Jackson for the post. Jackson’s work is not very widely known, which makes him an ideal candidate for Rockstar - the company does not like hiring famous stars in order to keep its characters more grounded and relatable, and to avoid having players associate these characters with real-world personalities. We’ll likely have to wait until the trailer Jackson hints at is release - or not - to learn more about how much of these claims are real. What’s definitely real is the November 11 release date for Expanded and Enhanced. What’s probablyreal is the GTA Remastered Trilogy releasing… soon?
