Sony Pictures has confirmed the Gran Turismo movie adaptation has now begun filming. The studio shared a photo of a clapper board with race cars in the background on its official Twitter page. ​After the box office successes of movie and tv adaptations of beloved games as seen in Uncharted, Sonic the Hedgehog, and The Witcher Netflix series, the Gran Turismo movie, which has been in development for over a decade, finally moved forward. The upcoming movie is based on PlayStation’s Gran Turismo, a series of racing simulation games that has been developed by Polyphony Digital since its debut in 1997. It is also the highest-selling video game franchise under the PlayStation Brand, selling 85 million copies.The storyline for the Gran Turismo movie is inspired by the incredible true story of Jann Mardenborough, who went from a Gran Turismo gamer to a professional race driver. In 2011, Mardenborough became the youngest to win the GT Academy competition, an international virtual-to-reality contest that allowed video gamers the opportunity to become a real-world car racing driver, beating 90,000 entrants. Mardenborough also competed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans race, finishing third on his debut in 2013. He continues to compete in Super GT and the 24-Hour Series to this day.
Playing the lead role of Mardenborough is Archie Madekwe, who appeared in Midsommar, HBO’s See and Voyagers. Other notable cast members are David Harbour of Stranger Things, Orlando Bloom of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and Gladiator’s Djimon Hounsou. Set to join the cast is Geri Halliwell-Horner, known as a member of the Spice Girls and who has an interesting connection to racing world. The musician and actress is married to Red Bull F1 Team Principal Christian Horner, on the Formula One paddock.District 9’s Neill Blomkamp will direct the upcoming movie with Gran Turismo game creator Kazunori Yamauchi executive producing the film, and writers Zach Baylin (King Richard) and Jason Hall (American Sniper) to complete the team.While much of what to expect from the film has been played close to the vest, the acclaimed video game has a large selection of real-world vehicles, and the newly released photo features a blurred starting line of Super GT cars. The cars expected to be showcased in the movie are the Nissan 370Zs and Nissan GTR-S which are the cars used in the GT Race Camp Academy after progressing from karts and Caterhams. Also expected to be shown in the film are the Le Mans Prototype 2 cars.Gran Turismo is set to be released on August 11, 2023. Until then, check out the set image and Collider's interview with Harbour below: