Whether you love gaming, motor-racing or just brilliant action movies, you’ll want to steer your way to your nearest Cineworld cinema to watch the new film Gran Turismo. Directed by Neill Blomkamp (Elysium, District 9), this long-awaited blockbuster tells the true-life tale of Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe), a teenage gamer who won a PlayStation competition playing Gran Turismo and was subsequently rewarded with a professional racing contract.
With a terrific cast and thrills aplenty, this suspenseful drama is a must-see, especially on one of Cineworld’s massive state-of-the-art screens. But what else do you need to know about Gran Turismo? Jump in the passenger seat, and join us for a quick tour around this brand-new action flick…
1. Lead actor Archie Madekwe has appeared in loads of cool stuff
Wondering where you’ve seen Archie Madekwe’s face before? Well, he might only be 28 years old, but the Londoner has already appeared in several acclaimed films and TV shows. He played Simon in Ari Aster’s psychedelic horror film Midsommar, and Kai in Neil Burger’s space thriller Voyagers. And his small-screen gigs have included Les Misérables, in which he played Courfeyrac, and US sci-fi series See, which saw him playing Kofun. We reckon that we’ll be seeing a lot more of him after his starring role in Gran Turismo.
2. He’s joined in Gran Turismo by some big stars
Though Archie is the star of the show here, he shares screen time with some familiar names. Playing Jann Mardenborough’s racing trainer is the ever-brilliant David Harbour, who’s probably best-known for playing Jim Hopper in the Netflix series Stranger Things. Then there’s Hollywood royalty Orlando Bloom, who appears as Nissan marketing executive Danny Moore. But perhaps the biggest story is that Jann’s mum is played by none other than Geri Halliwell – the Spice Girl making her first major film appearance since 2009’s Crank: High Voltage.
3. A Gran Turismo movie has been in the works for ten years
It usually takes a few years for a major movie to get off the ground, but Gran Turismo has taken a whole decade. It was way back in 2013 that rumours started circulating about a new film based on the iconic videogame. According to the reports, Watchmen writer Alex Tse was going to pen the script, while Joseph ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Kosinski was being lined up to direct. Sadly, the project fizzled out in 2018, and we’ve had to wait a further five years for the film to materialise. Still, absence makes the heart grow fonder, as they say!
4. David Harbour didn’t realise the film was based on a true story
So incredible is Gran Turismo’s storyline, it would be easy to mistake it for a work of fantasy. Even actor David Harbour was unsure whether it was fact or fiction when he was first handed a copy of the screenplay. “I was like, ‘Wow, this is either the dumbest Hollywood script I’ve ever read in my life… or it’s a true story,’” he told The Digital Fix. “And it turns out it’s a true story. So it makes it a really crazy, amazing movie. It’s just wild!”
5. The racing scenes are real
Gran Turismo features some incredible action scenes, with plenty of heart-in-your-mouth moments to be had as the souped-up speedsters battle it out on the track. What makes the action all the more impressive is that it was almost entirely shot without computer gimmicks. “Neill [Blomkamp] was really adamant about making it real and using as little CGI as possible,” David Harbour told GamesRadar. “So, for example, we actually did all the pit stops. The car would come screaming in at 100 miles per hour, we would put them up on hydraulics, change the tyres, peel the windshields off, all in real time.”
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