Neill Blomkamp Reveals Why He Wanted to Direct the Gran Turismo Movie

Neill Blomkamp, the director behind films like District 9 and Chappie, has revealed why he wanted to helm PlayStation’s new movie adaptation of the video game series Gran Turismo. When Blomkamp was first announced to be directing Gran Turismo last year, this news came as a bit of a surprise to those familiar with the director’s work. For Blomkamp, though, choosing to make Gran Turismo was an easy call given his own love of cars. 

Speaking to Total Film, Blomkamp said that he didn’t need a whole lot of convincing to direct Gran Turismo given his own interest in the film’s subject matter. He didn’t expand on just how deep his own adoration of cars goes, but given his self-described obsession, there’s a good chance that he was previously aware of the Gran Turismo video game franchise. As a result, those at Sony Pictures seemingly didn’t have to do much to convince him to become attached to the movie. 

“I’m just obsessed with cars. Totally obsessed,” Blomkamp said. “So I was like, ‘Yeah, I should probably do this film.’”

When talking more about the genre of Gran Turismo, Blomkamp also admitted that it’s technically a sports film. Although he doesn’t think of GT in this manner, the movie’s focus on motor sports means that those who enjoy sports movies are likely to find something to love with Gran Turismo. Blomkamp also admitted that this is likely the only such movie in the genre that he’ll likely create, which makes sense given that most of his other projects fall into the science fiction category. 

“I think it probably will ultimately fall into that genre,” he said of Gran Turismo’s genre. “I definitely don’t think of it that way but I think it’s hard not to. It’s definitely the closest that I’ll ever get to making a sports film – that is for sure!”

Gran Turismo is set to hit theaters later this year on August 11. In the interim, the latest entry in the video game series, Gran Turismo 7, released last year and is available now across PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 consoles.