There are far less movie paint schemes than there were 20 years ago.
Why is that?
Well, the short answer is this: I have no idea. But that image above of Tomy Drissi’s Straight Outta Compton movie scheme is cool, right?
With the divisive Reagan being the latest movie to grace the sides and/or hood of a NASCAR paint scheme (in fact, two of them), it kind of hit me that this decade has kind of sucked in terms of quantity when it comes to film-themed liveries.
Here’s a quick look at how it’s sharply declined in recent years. I’m going to divide this up by decade while also highlighting the year with the most such schemes, as well as the beginning and end years of the decade’s totals.
Make sense? It might not, but I’ll try to make it work. I’m excluding the cars used to film Days of Thunder and throwbacks to movie cars just to make things simpler, as this mostly just concerns promotional cars.
1980s
Total movies: 1
Total schemes: 1
Schemes in 1980: N/A
Schemes in 1989: 1
From everything I can gather, Dale Jarrett‘s Ghostbusters II scheme seems to be generally accepted as the first-ever movie paint scheme. Slow start, but it was the last year of the decade, so the 1980s gets a bit of forgiveness at the start of this bell curve.
1990s
Total movies: 8
Total schemes: 11
Schemes in 1990: 0
Schemes in 1999: 2
Year with the most: 1998 (3 movies)
And no, Jeff Gordon‘s Jurassic Park scheme doesn’t count since it was for the ride, not the movie.
2000s
Total movies: 59
Total schemes: 90
Schemes in 2000: 2
Schemes in 2009: 3
Year with the most: 2006 (9 movies)
2006 and 2004 tie here by technicalities; the 2008-release movie Death Toll, starring DMX, showed up as an innocuous text logo on Chad McCumbee‘s hood at the Texas Motor Speedway NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race. In 2006. And it didn’t release until ’08. Sure, I guess that counts.
And 2004 had eight of movies released that year … but nine if you count the twin Evernham Motorsports cars promoting the 10-year home-video release of The Lion King.
2007 has eight films, so it’s the only true high-number year. Yet the decade was bookended with two years featuring very few. Go figure.
2010s
Total movies: 37
Total schemes: 48
Schemes in 2010: 2
Schemes in 2019: 2
Year with the most: (tie) 2011 & 2013 (6 movies each)
Whereas the 2000s were the years of multiple cars running multiple races to promote a single movie, the 2010s scaled back nearly halfway on the fronts of both total movies and total schemes. One-offs or single-car efforts for promoting movies abounded. Not sure what the drop-off was due to, really, but the decade was again bookended by low-count years.
2020s (so far)
Total movies: 7
Total schemes: 7
Schemes in 2020: 0
Schemes in 2024: 2
Year with the most: 2021 (3 movies)
We’re currently on pace for a decade with 14 movies and 14 schemes in total if there aren’t any others this year; more than a halfway drop-off from the way the 2010s unfolded.
There’s only been a few to date, and missed opportunities this season specifically include Deadpool & Wolverine, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and others. I can’t say I see any others cropping up before the season is over, especially with eight races left. I also can’t see — in the time between now and early November — schemes coming to fruition for things like Terrifier 3, Joker 2 or Venom 3 … as much as I’m looking forward to two of those (not you, Joker).
We’ve got some headway to make. Let’s at least try to get to 20 movies this decade, shall we?
Adam Cheek joined Frontstretch as a contributing writer in January 2019. A 2020 graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, he covered sports there and later spent a year and a half as a sports host on 910 the Fan in Richmond, VA. He's freelanced for Richmond Magazine and the Richmond Times-Dispatch and also hosts the Adam Cheek's Sports Week podcast. Adam has followed racing since the age of three, inheriting the passion from his grandfather, who raced in amateur events up and down the East Coast in the 1950s.