Hollywood tends to have a cyclical nature. Does that mean we could see a string of racing movies made once again?
Every October, I do a little marathon of horror movies to celebrate spooky season. This year, as with most years, featured several 1980s horror flicks, both classic and forgotten.
That was the golden age of the genre, ranging from aliens (The Thing, Killer Klowns from Outer Space) to slashers (Friday the 13th; Silent Night, Deadly Night) to anthologies (Creepshow, Halloween III: Season of the Witch) and more.
The 1980s gave way to the 1990s, where it felt like — with a few exceptions, including Scream — the film industry largely seemed to give up on horror after an onslaught the decade prior.
It got me thinking about how Hollywood’s interests in certain things seems cyclical and always comes back around to things … eventually. While racing movies are far more niche than horror as a genre, it still applies.
While there are probably 2% as many racing movies as there are horror flicks — probably less — I look at the 2000s and see an extremely strong foundation of motorsports films that went … nowhere.
Not all of them are great (looking at you, 3 and Herbie Fully Loaded), but the cornerstones were in place. It’s also worth pointing out that the 2000s were the prime decade for movie paint schemes.
Let’s give it some grace and look at the last few years of the 1990s.
In 1997, we start off strong. The IMAX documentary Super Speedway highlights open-wheel racing with the Andrettis, and a Herbie movie (The Love Bug) comes out starring Bruce Campbell — who, coincidentally, was a staple of that 1980s horror thanks to Evil Dead and Evil Dead II.
Jump to the first few years of the 2000s, and we get the much-maligned Driven, starring Sylvester Stallone, and Right on Track, more of a kids’ movie but spotlighting drag racing and starring a not-yet-famous Brie Larson.
Then, from 2004-06, we get hammered with five generally sizable and/or notable productions. NASCAR: The IMAX Experience hit huge IMAX screens (or domes, where I saw it) across the country, while 3: The Dale Earnhardt Story hits TV screens. It’s nowhere near as good as the IMAX movie, but it’s NASCAR on a relatively big platform nonetheless. We got Saving Private Ryan‘s and 61*‘s Barry Pepper as well as J.K. Simmons, who among other things was in Spider-Man 2 that same year.
Good start!
Only one big production the next year, with Herbie Fully Loaded. It’s not great, but I watched it for the first time a few years ago, and I have to say that it still has some weird aura of early 2000s charm to it. It’s a fun time.
This is early-career Lindsay Lohan joined by a pretty stacked cast that included Michael Keaton, Matt Dillon, Justin Long, Jimmi Simpson, Scoot McNairy and Thomas Lennon.
Only one that year? That’s OK. 2006 will be better. And it was!
Two massive films put NASCAR in the cinematic spotlight that summer. Pixar’s Cars was released and remains, to my understanding, one of people’s favorites from the company. Doesn’t fully revolve around racing, but it’s the reason Lightning McQueen ends up in Radiator Springs, features a ton of voice cast cameos and more.
Soon after, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby roars its way into theaters. The first of our Will Ferrell x John C. Reilly comedies, followed two years later by Step Brothers, it’s entirely centered around racing, and also has a number of cameos (including Jamie McMurray receiving a middle finger from Ricky Bobby). We had promotional paint schemes for both movies that year as well.
Wow, 2006 was huge! Surely the next few years will continue the trend, right?
So, uh, in 2007, we have the Dale documentary. Sure!
And, uh, in 2008, here’s Speed Racer. Beloved, it seems, in hindsight — I haven’t seen it since theaters, and it’s not specific to any organized racing series in reality, but I digress.
In the early 2010s, we have movies revolving around all three, but it’s few and far between — the horrendous Cars 2, the IndyCar-based Turbo and the excellent F1 biopic Rush — and then, after 2013, things kind of grind to a halt.
There’s stuff here and there, but it’s very niche productions that you might not come across if you’re not looking for them. Ford v Ferrari, in 2019, might’ve been the only big one since that time to really get attention. That got Oscar consideration (and a few awards), so that probably popped up on more people’s radar than a racing movie normally would.
Joseph Kosinski’s F1 will be a huge landmark, especially with them using a lot of the same techniques they did with Top Gun: Maverick. Both Kosinski’s direction and Brad Pitt starring will help put it on a lot of maps.
Until then, we just need to keep waiting until Hollywood comes back around to auto racing.
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.