Machinima has achieved a total cultural victory in the US. You'll be able to see a Grand Theft Auto Online Hamlet production in theatres all across the country.

Who was the best Hamlet ever? Laurence Olivier Richard Burton? Henry Irving? None of the above. It's XxX_5pud5m4sh3r_XxX who has tragically not completed a play due to being shot in the head halfway through every performance.

It may not be the actual name of the actor, but I gather that Grand Theft Hamlet is an attempt to recreate the most famous play ever written "entirely within the video game Grand Theft Auto." It will be available on the artsy movie streaming site Mubi soon, and more confusingly it will also be shown in theaters across the USA.

Anyone who has played Grand Theft Auto online will know that this is a near impossible task. As far as I can tell the film is a combination of a Hamlet play and a documentary about how impossible it is to stage a Hamlet performance in GTAO. The synopsis reads: "This documentary charts the hilarious yet profoundly moving story two out-of-work actors as they attempt to stage a Hamlet production in this notoriously violent digital environment."

The trailer is not a trailer. It's actually a gameplay clip showing our two protagonists trying to act out Hamlet in GTA 5 Vinewood Bowl. The players in the crowd are killing each other and the actors while summoning the cops. Finally, the LSPD crashes the proceedings in a helicopter.

This kind of thing used to be called Machinima. Machinima was the name we gave to people who created whole TV shows within videogames. When I was a naive teenager, my media diet consisted of Red vs. Blue, Civil Protection and Half-Life: The Full Life Consequences. It's like a medieval peasant who is watching his cheap staple food suddenly become haute cuisine.

Grand Theft Hamlet will be coming to a streaming platform, and possibly a theater near you, "soon."