’08 Death Race cars: ejector seats, napalm, and rocket launchers.
An homage?
That’s what Jason Statham recently declared about the upcoming remake, in an interview to
SCI FI Wire (the online news section of the SCI FI channel) which we found quite reassuring. We’re big fans of the original here at CARS+MOVIES, and it’s nice to see the production show respect for it.
Jason Statham has the lead role in the remake of the 1975 Bartel/Corman cult classic, as a prisoner being forced to compete in the deadly car race, and is very excited about the project: “It’s more of [an] homage to the Corman film. It’s not really a direct remake. I suppose it’s very different. There’s a great story to it, and I think it’ll do really well. [Director] Paul Anderson was a dream to work with, and I’m really excited about seeing it.”
Say what?
“The cars in this are really killer.”
You’ve read the title correctly. Forget the horns and the fake teeth, the updated version -or homage as Jason puts it- brings in the heavy weaponry: “The cars in this are really killer. They’ve got ejector seats, and they spray out oil and napalm, and they’ve got rocket launchers. The story is it’s a race to the death, and all the inmates in the prison build these cars.” How’s that for a tie-in to reality, Unique Performance? Hope they don’t use to much Bondo on these, it could make the cars too heavy.
Death Race will be out on September 26th, 2008. You can watch the trailer for the first version in our post Death Race 2000 (1975): original trailer.
Source: SCI FI wire
