Okay, at first we weren’t going to mention this, seeing as how the Duper Wachowski Bros. turned one of the best films of all time, The Matrix, into one of the most inexplicable franchises of all time. But what the hell. It’s old, it’s Japanese, it’s vehicular.
We speak of the Speed Racer live action film by the Wachowskis that’s due out in 2008, based on, of course, the 1966 anime of the same name or, if you prefer, Mach Go Go Go! in Japanese. It was imported into the US in 1967 and is one of the earliest examples of the craft to gain worldwide success.
Apparently, there is a person named Emile Hirsch, and has been cast as Speed. Gothy Christina Ricci will play Trixie, Lost‘s Matthew Fox is Racer X, John Goodman plays Pops, and Susan Sarandon will aim for another Oscar for her heart-wrenching performance as Speed’s Mom. No word yet on whether Nicholas Cage or George W. Bush will be cast as Chim-Chim.
Of course, we all know the real star of the show will be the Mach 5, Speed’s pimped out race whip that cast the principle of weight reduction to the wind with its plethora of gadgets. It’s been updated with a longer nose and more blingy wheels, but it’s still all business. The identity of the base car that donated its chassis for the making of the Mach 5 is unknown as of now. Datsun 280ZX, perhaps?
Thanks to Gizmodo for the tip and pic.
Last I heard, Vince Vaughn was slated to play Racer X, which made me think that this is going to get the hokey “Starsky & Hutch” treatment….They’d probably cast Owen Wilson as Speed, and Ben Stiller as Trixie if that were still the case. There was a company building mach V replicars a few years back in California, they were using C5 vette chassis and looked an awful lot like the car in that picture (which looks more like a 3-d model done with some CG software than it does a 280zx to me…)
http://community-2.webtv.net/mach5ive/THEMACHFIVES/page2.html
Yeah, we were just joking around based on the Speed Racer-themed 280ZX we spotted at the Z Car Nationals. Click on the “Datsun 280ZX” link in the post to be taken directly to the pic. This thing definitely looks nothing like the 280ZX. If only Transformers used the same cars as the cartoon!