It’s far from a secret: video game film adaptations have a certain reputation. While there have certainly been successful leaps to the big screen in the forms of Sonic the Hedgehog 1 & 2, Pokemon: Detective Pikachu, and, most recently, the mega-hit Super Mario Bros. Movie, it’s no wonder why there was a little bit of hesitation around the upcoming feature adaptation of Gran Turismo.
“When I got handed the script, I was like, ‘how would you be able to make a film about Gran Turismo? That makes no sense. It’s like, a racing simulator,’ “ director Neill Blomkamp tells IGN in an exclusive interview on the set.
It was the real-life approach behind the story of the film, Blomkamp says, that sold him. Gran Turismo, after all, isn’t a direct adaptation of the video game, but rather the true story about Gran Turismo player Jann Mardenborough and his journey through the GT Academy, which had him and other students becoming real-life racecar drivers.
“Jann’s story is unbelievable because he went from playing Gran Turismo in his parents’ house on a console – like a driving system console that he built – to placing third at Le Mans,” Blomkamp says. “It was this very organic merging of a video game backbone with a real-life, real-world set up and characters that work organically.”
“When I got handed the script, I was like, ‘how would you be able to make a film about Gran Turismo?’
Star David Harbour came from a similar place. Despite loving video games and even PlayStation games in particular, he tells IGN that he never played and had “never been interested” in Gran Turismo the game.
Plus, there’s that aforementioned reputation that video game movies have (although we should note that this interview was conducted before the Super Mario Bros. Movie took the box office by storm). But, like Blomkamp, it was the approach that sold him.
“I’m really happy with the approach that they took to this, because I think we all know, unfortunately – I mean, it’s just a thing – video game movies don’t work,” he says. “There’s a lot that have failed. Part of that reason is because what we love about video games is that we’re the player playing them… we’re controlling the action. We don’t necessarily want a director and a team of people to control our point of view, to tell us what the story is within it. We ourselves want to carve that story for ourselves.”
“This is great because… the video game is a part of the movie,” he continues. “I mean, it’s about a guy who played video games very intensely, and then took that video game experience and put it on the track. It really becomes, to me, like a great sports movie.”
He even likens it to Hoosiers, the 1986 Gene Hackman-starrer about an underdog basketball team who, of course, succeeds against all odds.
“That is the same story of this kid who’s playing video games and nobody believes in him,” Harbour says. “Nobody thinks he can do this, everyone’s against him. And he overcomes these incredible odds and really achieves this incredible thing.”
Gran Turismo races into theaters on Aug. 23, 2023. Watch the full interviews with Blomkamp, Harbour, and stars Archie Madekwe and Orlando Bloom below.
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
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