David Harbour to play a human in Gran Turismo movie

Sony has taken what may be the least interesting path one could possibly take when making completely sterile and prestigious racing game series Gran Turismo into a movie, despite Neill Blomkamp signing on as director, with reports saying that the movie will be about a teenage gamer who is so good at Gran Turismo that he wins a series of competitions and becomes a real professional race car driver (so The Wizard, if that movie was about someone becoming an actual Super Mario). So much for our dream of a period-set movie about ‘90s car culture, or some kind of animated comedy about sentient cars where the headlights are the eyes—unlike some other movies where the windshield is the eyes for some reason.

Still, Blomkamp is interesting, and now the film has added an interesting cast member: According to The Hollywood Reporter, David Harbor will be starring in the film… as a person. Not as a car, unfortunately. Specifically, he’ll be playing a retired racing driver who teaches the teen protagonist how to drive a car, so hopefully he’ll get to say something like “you’ve gotta use your arms and legs, not just your thumbs,” and then the teen and everyone in the audience will be like “pshaw, old man.” (But in the end he’ll be right, because you can’t just use your thumbs in a real car, but also he’ll learn something about respecting the younger generation.)

Sony’s PlayStation Productions label has been making aggressive moves into Hollywood lately with the Uncharted movie and the upcoming Twisted Metal and Last Of Us TV shows, plus things that are still in the works like Gravity Rush, God Of War, Ghost Of Tsushima, and Horizon Zero Dawn. Most of those make better sense as movies/TV shows than Gran Turismo, so if they can make this one work, the rest should be relatively smooth sailing. Harbour, meanwhile, will be returning to the MCU eventually for the Thunderbolts movie.