Stranger Things star David Harbour has joined the Gran Turismo movie
The Neill Blomkamp-directed film will be released in August 2023
Stranger Things actor David Harbour has signed on to star in the Gran Turismo movie.
Sony is billing the film as the ultimate wish fulfilment tale of a teenage Gran Turismo player whose gaming skills won a series of Nissan competitions to become an actual professional race car driver.
Harbour, who plays Jim Hopper in Netflix’s sci-fi series and starred as Red Guardian in Black Widow, will play a retired driver who teaches the teenager to drive in Gran Turismo, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Neill Blomkamp (Demonic, Chappie, Elysium, District 9) is directing the movie, from a script written by Jason Hall (American Sniper) and Zach Baylin (King Richard).
The film could be based on the GT Academy contest, which was run by Nissan and Sony between 2008 and 2016 and gave winners a place in Nissan’s Driver Development Programme.
One of the most notable real-life success stories of the GT Academy is UK racer Jann Mardenborough, who won in 2011 and has since gone on to compete in the GP3 Series, the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Japanese Super GT series.
PlayStation Productions’ Asad Qizilbash and Carter Swan are among the film’s producers, while Gran Turismo creator and Polyphony Digital boss Kazunori Yamauchi is serving as an executive producer.
“As one of PlayStation’s longest standing and most beloved franchises, it’s great to be partnering with Columbia Pictures again to bring Gran Turismo to life in an exciting way,” said Qizilbash. “We can’t wait for audiences to see Neill’s vision of this inspiring true story of gamer turned professional race car driver.”
Further reading
The Last of Us TV series’ first footage has been shown
The Gran Turismo film is slated for release on August 11, 2023.
In addition to recently announced God of War and Horizon TV shows, PlayStation Productions is reportedly working on movie adaptations of Days Gone and Gravity Rush, among other projects.
