Although Speed Racer was a box-office failure upon its release over 15 years ago, the film has grown a passionate cult following, with some even calling it an underrated masterpiece. With its kaleidoscope explosion of colours, Speed Racer is just begging for a release on 4K Ultra HD, but co-director Lilly Wachowski told Collider that it doesn’t seem to be in the cards.
“The ‘Speed Racer’ fanbase is so rabid that they’re constantly at-ing me on social media and so I actually looked into whether or not Warner Bros. had plans to release ‘Speed Racer’ in 4K,” she said, “and that was a few years ago, and they don’t see the fan base that’s out there for something like that, which is unfortunate. And Warner Bros. is also…who knows what’s going on there. You gotta get at the head of the company.“
Speed Racer was shot digitally in the early days of digital filmmaking, so a true 4K remaster is probably out of the question. However, the film would be unbelievable with HDR and Dolby Atmos audio. The film was included in a Warner Bros. survey last year asking which titles fans would want to be released in 4K. A handful of titles from that list, including Lethal Weapon, Se7en, Constantine, Amadeus, and Barry Lyndon, have since received 4K releases (or will soon), so you’ve got to think that the studio will be getting to Speed Racer at some point.
Based on the manga series of the same name created by Tatsuo Yoshida, Speed Racer starred Emilie Hirsch as a young racing prodigy who follows in the footsteps of his apparently deceased brother by racing for his family and their company, Racer Motors. But after he turns down a contract from the owner of Royalton Industries, all hell breaks loose on the racetrack.
Hirsch has been a longtime champion of the film, even expressing confusion when the initial reviews were mixed, but he now feels that the film is finally being appreciated. “When it came out, it was unanimously dogged,” he said. “I remember we were all like, ‘Man, this movie is so good. How come nobody gets it?’ That was sort of our perspective. But then we were also like, ‘Are we the crazy ones?’ Because it’s the public and the critics…So it’s really validating to have everybody come around all these years later.“
Would you like to see a 4K release of Speed Racer?
