Live-Action ‘Speed Racer’ TV Series in the Works at Apple TV+

Apple TV+ is prepping Speed Racer, a high-profile live-action series from J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot and Warner Bros. Television, where the company is under a deal.

Details are sketchy but Deadline reports the project, written by Hiram Martinez (Snowpiercer) and Ron Fitzgerald (Westworld), is going back to the original source material and is a live-action take on the classic 1960s manga series.

The series is reportedly now staffing a writers room, with Martinez and Fitzgerald as executive producers/co-showrunners.

Speed Racer, a Japanese media franchise about automobile racing, first launched as a manga series titled Mach GoGoGo by Tatsuo Yoshida in 1966. Trans-Lux acquired syndication rights and Speed Racer was adapted into anime by Tatsunoko Productions, which aired on Japan’s Fuji TV from 1967-68 and aired in the U.S. in syndication at about the same time.

The show’s mainstream success in the U.S. spawned an ongoing Speed Racer franchise beginning in the 1990s, which ranged from comics, video releases, merchandise, a live-action film and series.

The series is unlikely to have any connection to the 2008 box office misfire by the Wachowski Brothers.