Gran Turismo movie content arrives in GT7

A little way into the movie Gran Turismo, the unlikely brand extension of Sony’s sim racing games accidentally satirizes itself. “This whole thing is a marketing extravaganza!” excitable auto executive Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom) shouts at salty racing coach Jack Salter (David Harbour). They’re aboard a helicopter wheeling above a racetrack, where Salter’s students in the GT Academy — a real-life program intended to turn players of Sony’s Gran Turismo games into actual racing drivers — are being put through their paces. The helicopter is an absurd bit of theater for the TV cameras, and Salter knows it. But he’s powerless to resist the marketing apparatus around him.

The video game movie opened with $1.4 million in Thursday previews.

«I know a lot about sitting in a video gaming chair playing video games,» Harbour joked.

A decade ago, when Sony Pictures first announced its plan to adapt the PlayStation racing sim Gran Turismo into a movie, fans of the franchise were bemused. Two big questions — How? And why? — were quickly answered: The Gran Turismo movie would be based not on the video game, but on the real-life story of a player turned professional racer.

We got to chat with Jann Mardenborough, the “gamer to racer” subject at the heart of the Gran Turismo movie, with topics ranging from his experience in GT Academy to stunt driving for the film about his incredible life. 

Gran Turismoand Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhemhave one big thing in common that certainly wasn’t planned: Both movies suggest that playing a lot of racing games will make you an awesome real-world driver. In TMNT, extensive experience with Forza Horizon prepares mutant shut-in Donatello to drive a van under the most aggressive and frightening street conditions possible. Gran Turismo picks up the real-world story of pro racer Jann Mardenborough, who went from winning a GT Academy competition to winning races on the real-world competitive circuit.

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Gran Turismo is a Neill Blomkamp-directed film based on the popular PlayStation franchise. It tells the tracks the tale of how Jann Mardenborough turned his love of Gran Turismo games into a fully-fledged motorsport career. Though the wide release for the USA is set for August 25, the film has aired in international markets, reception has been good thus far, and it has been reported that the film has already grossed $22.7 million.

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Ever since the huge successes of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Uncharted, and The Last Of Us, films and TV shows adapted from video games have been all the rage in Hollywood. But when Neill Blomkamp received a call from Sony asking if he wanted to direct a movie based around its super-serious, hyper-realistic racing game series Gran Turismo, he was initially confused.

David Harbour might not be a former racing legend in real life, but he did get an extremely hands on experience for Gran Turismo. 

The first reviews of the Gran Turismo movie are in, and the response is mixed.