MOVIE NEWS – After Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Chris Hemsworth is heading back into dusty, dangerous and brutally fast territory, but not inside George Miller’s post-apocalyptic wasteland. Through his own production company, the actor is developing a new feature film built around a real Australian desert race, with Hemsworth attached as both producer and star.

Chris Hemsworth has never been a stranger to high-speed, physically demanding action. Beyond his Marvel work, he already has a serious racing-film credit through Ron Howard’s 2013 sports drama Rush, where he played James Hunt, and in 2024 he threw himself into George Miller’s wasteland as Dementus in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Now he is moving back toward similarly hostile terrain, only this time not as a fictional warlord. His next project will put him at the center of a film inspired by one of Australia’s most punishing real motorsport events.

Racing movies have become powerful business again in Hollywood, most recently underlined by Apple’s ambitious F1: The Movie. The Brad Pitt-led film passed $634 million worldwide, became the highest-grossing live-action sports movie ever, and turned into the biggest box-office hit of Pitt’s career. Hemsworth’s new project enters that renewed appetite for racing stories, but it will not be about polished Formula One circuits. It is heading into the Australian Outback.

Hemsworth’s Wild State media company, which he co-founded with producer Ben Grayson in 2022, has secured an exclusive partnership with the organizers of the Tatts Finke Desert Race. The deal covers several projects based on the grueling two-day off-road challenge, including a narrative feature developed as a starring vehicle for Hemsworth. The film is still in early development, with Concrete Cowboy duo Ricky Staub and Dan Walser attached to write the script. The official Tatts Finke Desert Race website describes the event as an off-road, multi-terrain, two-day race for bikes, cars and buggies, running through desert country from Alice Springs to the small Aputula, or Finke, community. The race is held every year over the King’s Birthday long weekend in June, and this year’s edition marks 50 years since the inaugural 1976 There and Back run.

Hemsworth also framed the project as something personal: “Off-road racing has been a passion in my family for a long time and we at Wild State are thrilled to partner with the Tatts Finke Desert Race on the eve of its 50th anniversary and bring this epic competition to a global audience.” The partnership is not limited to the feature film. Wild State is also developing unscripted content, including a docuseries following freestyle motocross legend Robbie Maddison as it captures the madness of the race. The projects join a varied slate at Wild State that already includes the Disney+ series Limitless with Chris Hemsworth, Netflix’s Extraction franchise and Amazon’s high-profile Crime 101. Hemsworth is therefore not just signing onto another racing film; he is using his own production banner to bring one of Australia’s toughest real desert challenges to an international audience.

Source: MovieWeb