Video game-based movies and TV shows are having a bit of a moment right now. “A Minecraft Movie” has become a bona fide cultural phenomenon (ask your kid/cousin/nephew about “chicken jockey”) and adaptations like HBO’s “The Last of Us” and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” are not-bad works of media in their own right. Now, explosion connoisseur and car chase auteur Michael Bay supposedly wants in on the action with a big-screen version of a classic racing game: “OutRun.”
According to sources speaking to Deadline, the guy who brought us “Transformers” and “Bad Boys” will direct an “OutRun” movie. Actress Sydney Sweeney is also involved but reportedly as a producer, not a star. The story’s validity is backed up by the fact that it was reposted to both Sweeney’s Instagram story on Monday night and on X by Jayson Rothwell, the film’s alleged writer.
For those unfamiliar, “OutRun” was a big deal in the ’80s, being the highest-grossing arcade game of 1987. Presented in blocky 16-bit, players raced a Ferrari Testarossa down a sunny, beach-adjacent road lined with palm trees—classic Michael Bay imagery.
Fun fact: In the original 1986 game, the Testarossa was not actually licensed product placement but simply a very obvious but unofficial lookalike. Later instalments, however, used real, licensed Ferraris.
It’s no secret that Ferrari sometimes isn’t the easiest car company to deal with. But we can’t imagine it’ll be that hard to convince the company today to have its vehicles featured in a cinematic adaptation of “OutRun,” considering its working relationship with Bay and how much it’s warmed up to licensing its vehicles for fun purposes. It recently made a lot of noise over the return of Ferrari Hot Wheels, another toy property that’s supposed to get the live-action movie treatment sometime in the near future. J.J. Abrams is apparently doing that one, believe it or not.
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