Watch the trailer for Daniel Radcliffe’s ‘Grand Theft Auto’ drama ‘The Gamechangers’

Think back to video games in 2002. The fastest-growing sector were those dubbed “mature,” or “Rated M.” Led by the “Grand Theft Auto” series, video games were taking sex and violence to new heights, and not everyone was happy.

Welcome to the setting of “The Gamechangers,” a 90-minute BBC Two docudrama starring Daniel Radcliffe and Bill Paxton. A teaser for the program, which is set to debut overseas on Sept. 15, found its way online Thursday. The clip was shared on social media by Radcliffe.

In “The Gamechangers,” Radcliffe stars as Sam Houser, one of the masterminds at Rockstar Games who turned the “Grand Theft Auto” series into a video game blockbuster. Paxton is lawyer Jack Thompson, a leading opponent of the series, seen in the trailer dismissing Houser and his team as having “little regard” for “Grand Theft Auto’s” effect on young minds.

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The Times in early 2002 reviewed “Grand Theft Auto III” and was unimpressed. The title, we wrote, is “so suffused with sadism that its considerable technical attributes are lost in a nihilistic realm that gives the finger to any sense of propriety or responsibility.”

The short, a 75-second preview of “The Gamechangers” sees Radcliffe’s Houser, hailed as a “British genius” by a voiceover, boasting that “Grand Theft Auto” is “beyond what film can do. We’re going to create the first truly adaptable hero.”

We then see glimpses of a courthouse, some potentially reckless driving, the requisite nightclub shot and flashes of a newspaper headline (“Alabama teen arrested in multiple homicide: On arrest killer says, ‘Life is like a video game,’ ” it reads).

Like most things associated with “Grand Theft Auto,” the BBC drama has been met with controversy. Rockstar parent Take-Two Interactive earlier this year was reported to be investigating legal options against the BBC.

A spokesman for Take-Two Interactive has yet to respond to requests for comment.

“The Gamechangers” was written by James Wood (“Rev,” “Ambassadors”) and directed by Owen Harris (“Kill Your Friends,” “Black Mirror”).

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