Amazon MGM Studios has green-lit a project about the 1980s American car racing scandal called ‘American Speed’, starring Tom Holland and Austin Butler.
The American Speed project has no director yet, the film will be written by Dan Wiedenhaupt based on the true story of the Whittington brothers. The Whittington family has 3 sons who are all racers, 2 of whom are involved in the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) scandal that shook the sports world in the 1980s. Many racers were accused when the money they used to finance their racing activities was earned from drug smuggling, money laundering or tax evasion.
In the project currently in development, Tom Holland and Austin Butler will play two brothers in the Whittington family, Don and Bill. However, further information about the two artists’ characters has not been released.
In the past 2 weeks, this is the 3rd project that Tom Holland has been confirmed to star in, the 2 previous projects announced were an unnamed film directed by Christopher Nolan (where he co-stars with Matt Damon) and the 4th part of the Spider-Man franchise (where he will reprise his role as Spider-Man/Peter Parker). Marvel’s other big project, Avengers: Doomsday, has not yet confirmed whether he will participate or not.
Austin Butler , also a rising artist in Hollywood, has recently attracted attention with important films such as the biographical-musical work Elvis (released in 2022) and recently the blockbuster Dune 2 (2023), the World War II TV series Masters of the Air (released earlier this year)…
Other artists involved in the American Speed project have not been announced yet. In real life, 2 of the 3 Whittington brothers were racing stars in the 1970s and 1980s. Therefore, American Speed is being “teased” as a flashy, “money-smelling” sports project. American Speed currently has no scheduled release date.