Stranger Things star David Harbour is stepping behind the wheel for the upcoming Gran Turismo movie: more here.
It’s been revealed that David Harbour will be bringing his trademark brand of gruff mentoring to Sony’s Gran Turismo film.
The adaptation of Sony’s long-running race-driving simulator (one of the world’s most popular video game franchises) is coming from PlayStation Productions, the arm of the studio responsible for adapting its video game properties into movies.
Despite having only been announced in May, the film is set to be with us in less than a year, meaning we’d expect further casting announcements to come thick and fast. Still, the announcement that Harbour is involved is a welcome one. The actor has carved out something of a niche for himself in the last few years as the go-to guy for playing entertaining and very watchable variants on the grizzled veteran archetype.
From worldly Harrison Ford-style grumpiness as Hopper in Stranger Things to the grizzled, over-the-hill superhero variant as Black Widow’s Red Guardian, the actor has cornered the market in playing tetchy, dissatisfied older males. In Gran Turismo, it looks like we’ll be getting another take as Harbour will play a retired driver who becomes a mentor to the film’s teen protagonist.
Casting for the teenager role hasn’t been announced yet, but they will be the central focus of the story. Gran Turismo will follow a teenage Gran Turismo player whose gaming skills are good enough that he wins a series of Nissan competitions to become an actual professional race car driver. Sound a bit like The Last Starfighter but in race cars, although we doubt that’s how it was pitched in the boardroom.
District 9‘s Neill Blomkamp will be directing from a script by American Sniper's Jason Hall and King Richard's Zach Baylin. Given the extremely tight timeline the film is working to, it’s a bold move from Sony who seem full of confidence following the positive commercial performance of Uncharted earlier this year, its first release under the PlayStation Productions banner.
The studio is pushing out a spate of projects at the moment: we’ve already been assured that we’ll be getting a follow-up to Uncharted whilst early footage of a prestige TV series based on the critically-acclaimed game series The Last Of Us has impressed fans. There’s also the Ghost Of Tsushima adaptation slated to be directed by Chad Stahelski, the director of the John Wick films and takes on Gravity Rush and Days Gone said to be in development. We’ll bring you more on Gran Turismo as we hear it.
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