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The recently released Moana live-action remake is projected to lose Disney more than $100 million after a disappointing opening-weekend haul at the box office. The movie grossed around $95 million worldwide in its debut frame, against a reported production budget of $250 million. Disney experienced a similar setback only last year, when Tron: Ares grossed less than $150 million worldwide against a budget of more than $200 million. That film’s losses were estimated to be around $130 million. These are massive numbers by any standard, and performances like this are unfortunately becoming more frequent. Back in the day, however, when a movie caused losses this massive, it went down in history. One such film is currently available to stream in the United States on Paramount+, but not for much longer.

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Rockstar Games' open-world adventures almost always try to one-up their predecessors, at least in terms of sheer size, and that's not a pattern one former GTA 5 developer anticipates will change when GTA 6 finally blasts onto the scene.

John Ricchio, a former producer on everything from GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption to Max Payne 3, was recently asked about whether he'd even want to be part of the studio ahead GTA 6's imminent launch.

"I think the fact that every single time they do a GTA, it's ludicrously bigger than before is like something that I think about," Ricchio says in a chat with YouTuber Kiwi Talkz. "Like, I can only imagine the size of GTA 6. Like it must be monstrous. Or if not monstrous, it's probably way more detailed."

That's an expectation he has based on Rockstar Games' track record so far. As he notes, GTA 5 was "significantly bigger than GTA 4," which itself was much bigger in many ways than the original Red Dead Redemption. "Even between GTA and RDR, they were continually growing the size of the world," he adds. And while the ballooning scope adds extra wrinkles for the development team, "it really does make you feel like you're in a place."

Circling back to the question, Ricchio then laughs and says, "I'm pretty happy that I'm not on GTA 6. Not that it wouldn't be cool to work with those people… but it is really difficult, and it's a hard period of your career when you're working that hard on something." Despite the hard work, seeing how excited people get over his work is "magic" and "so rewarding" for Ricchio.

GTA 6 is on track for "the strongest pre-order campaign ever recorded" and up to $5 billion in sales by "the end of launch week," analysts say