Speed Racer live-action TV series from Bad Robot to hit the track at Apple TV+

Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to start your engines for when a new live-action Speed Racer TV series barrels onto Apple TV+. The newly-announced project hails from J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot and Warner Bros. Television. Details about the live-action adaptation remain unclear, though it’s believed the show is being written by Hiram Martinez (Snowpiercer) and Ron Fitzgerald (Westworld). We’ve also heard that the source material will play a significant role in bringing the classic 1960s manga to life. Sources indicate that a writers’ room is being assembled with Martinez and Fitzgerald also serving as executive producers and co-showrunners.

Speed Racer hails from Japan and is an automobile racing franchise that started as a manga series titled Mach GoGoGo by Tatsuo Yoshida in 1966. After Trans-Lux scooped up the syndication rights, Speed Racer was adapted into an anime by Tatsunoko Productions, which aired on Japan’s Fuji TV from 1967 to 1968 and aired in the U.S. in syndication around the same time.

The Speed Racer TV series achieved high-profile success in the U.S., which resulted in an ongoing franchise in the 1990s. Speed Racer became so popular that it made its way into comics, video games, a live-action feature film, and a 1993 series titled The New Adventures of Speed Racer. Another series followed in 2008 called Speed Racer: The Next Generation, which was released on Nicktoons and then MTV, Cartoon Network, and Boomerang.

The Wachowskis wrote and directed a live-action film adaptation of Speed Racer, starring Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, John Goodman, Susan Sarandon, Paulie Litt, and Matthew Fox. The titular racer grew up to follow in the footsteps of his allegedly deceased brother. Still, after choosing to remain loyal to his family, Royalton Industries CEO E.P. Arnold Royalton (Roger Allam) seeks to take Speed and his family out of the racing game by any means necessary.

Do you think the time is right for a new Speed Racer TV series? Who would you cast in the role of Speed? Is Bad Robot the proper studio to revamp this classic property? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.