Sony Pictures’ Gran Turismo hits theaters on August 11, 2023, and we now have a teaser trailer showing what to expect.
The short video is more of a preview than a trailer. It includes some insights into the action on the track with current sports car prototypes and GT cars. In the spirit of the Sony video game series the film is based on, director Neill Blomkamp seems to have a more realistic feel than, say, the Need for Speed film that premiered in 2014.
Rumored since 2013 and confirmed to be on Sony’s release slate in 2022, the film is based on a true story. It tells the story of the career of British racing driver Jann Mardenborough, who got into real racing with “Gran Turismo”. Mardenborough is played by Archie Madekwe from the Apple TV+ series See, and he is joined in the film by David Harbor from Stranger Things and Orlando Bloom, who made his mark in the Lord of the Rings films .
For those unfamiliar with the story, Gran Turismo publisher Sony Computer Entertainment once hosted a competition with Nissan called GT Academy. Between 2008 and 2016, players competed against each other for a chance to become a Nissan factory driver. The competition seems to feed into the film’s plot, as the trailer features a bunch of young drivers in identical racing overalls and a bunch of Nissan GT-Rs.
Mardenborough won GT Academy in 2011 at the age of 19 and competed in the 2013 24 Hours of Le Mans, finishing third in the LMP2 class behind Lucas Ordoñez, a GT Academy graduate. He returned to Le Mans in 2015 in the top LMP1 class with the Nissan works team, driving the Nissan GT-R LM Nismo prototype which aimed to outperform more established competitors with a novel front-wheel drive design with downforce ducts.
Things weren’t going well. Mardenborough and co-drivers Max Chilton and Olivier Pla failed to finish in what turned out to be an uncompetitive and unreliable car. Le Mans 2015 ended up being the car’s only race and Mardenborough’s most prominent career moment to date. This isn’t exactly a Hollywood ending.