Media | Articles
Outrun Races to the Big Screen with Michael Bay at the Wheel
1980s arcade racer Outrun is the latest video game set to inspire a blockbuster movie, according to a report from Deadline.
Boosted by the success of A Minecraft Movie and HBO’s The Last of Us, it’s the Sega smash of 1986 that’s top of Universal’s list for the next pixel-turned-live-action flick.
Deadline says that a pair of serious gearheads are linked to the project—Michael Bay is down as director, and Sydney Sweeney will star and produce. Bay’s back catalog includes the Transformers and Bad Boys franchises, where the automotive action is front and center, while Sweeney is a well-known Ford fan, who has collaborated with the Blue Oval on workwear, custom builds, and a car maintenance channel on TikTok.
Adding to the power behind the scenes is Toru Nakahara, who produced the Sonic the Hedgehog movies, and Sega’s president Shuji Utsumi will also be hands-on.
There’s precious little information about a plot at this stage, but there’s potential here for this to be a two-hour chase sequence—a 2020s’ Two Lane Blacktop or Duel. What’s certain is that the soundtrack will be key to the movie’s success, just as the choice of music that provided the backdrop to the game was so influential. In fact it spawned a whole Outrun sub-genre of electronic music.
Marketplace
Buy and sell classics with confidence
Back in the day when you dropped a quarter into the Outrun cabinet, you took the wheel of a Ferrari Testarossa Spider and went for a high-speed drive on successively more challenging stages that began beachside before heading into mountains’ deserts, towns and, an autobahn run.
That Testarossa Spider was a work of fiction, yet Pininfarina did actually make one for a special client, while Ferrari also made a one-off for Fiat boss Gianni Agnelli. Surely Maranello will be on board, but will it be a classic or the latest Spider that stars?
As for the setting original game, designer Yu Suzuki based the different routes the roads of Europe, although his inspiration was said to be The Cannonball Run, so an American location for the Outrun movie would also be true to the concept.
There’s no news on a release date yet, so it’s back to the games console while we wait.
Find more values
Search for prices of other cars, trucks, vans and motorcycles
Interesting, but I’d rather see an updated Outrun video game for home consoles. Keep the same car, update the game play and graphics.
I agree. Can I get something that runs on my PC?
When the Angry Birds movie came out, Hollywood had officially run out of ideas
It won’t be a true homage to Outrun, unless a (CGI) Sydney Sweeney goes flying out of the car when it crashes!
Two Lane Blacktop is just about the farthest thing from a two-hour chase sequence that I can imagine. Maybe the author needs to rewatch the film, assuming he ever saw it in the first place.
I have a custom video game cabinet with over 15,000 80s and 90s video games on it, and there’s a whole section unto itself for various versions of the Outrun game franchise. Fun stuff.