Before we get into the details of the CinemaCon footage, here’s the official synopsis for “Gran Turismo”:
Based on the true story of Jann Mardenborough, the film is the ultimate wish fulfillment tale of a teenage ‘Gran Turismo’ player whose gaming skills won a series of Nissan competitions to become an actual professional racecar driver.
During the CinemaCon presentation, we learned that Bloom plays a marketing guy who realizes that “Gran Turismo” is such a good game that real drivers actually use it for training. One such player of the game named Jann Mardenborough was actually good enough to earn him a spot with real drivers. This is not fiction: this is based on a real story! What’s more, Mardenborough does the actual driving in the movie for the character based on him. Now, let’s get into the actual footage.
We see Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe) playing the game online. His father (Djimon Hounsou), meanwhile, is rather unhappy because his son is just playing the game all the time. But the kid discovers a contest with the best gamers in the world, and that’s when everything changes. It has a bit of a “Kingsman” look, with an academy for these drivers. David Harbour’s character says this won’t work but he’s forced to train the gamers to be athletic and physical. He’s a coach of sorts.
There’s also a bit of a “Top Gun” Maverick” vibe, with talk of how tough it is in the cockpit. Real cars are on a track crashing into the players. “If you miss a line in the game, you reset. If you miss it on the track, you could die,” Harbour says. There’s one particularly cool shot of Mardenborough as a real car starts to appear around him, and it transitions into a real racetrack shot. And that’s about it!
“Gran Turismo” is set to hit theaters on August 11, 2023.
