Car Manufactures That Make Films.

willtang · October 20, 2002

Car manufactures that make films.

This post is for those of you, who like me have a passion for films & cars.

Last year BMW USA (urgh! The devil!!!!) Commissioned David Fincher (Seven, Fight club) to produce five 5-minute films to promote the Z3, X5, 740, 540, 330CI that would only be available on the net.

The idea was to employ 5 different directors for each of the films:

Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, The Hulk (2003)) had the 540i

John Frankenheimer, (Ronin) had the 740i

Wong Kar-Wai (Fallen Angels, Chung King Express) had the Z3 3.0i & 330CI

Guy Ritchie, (Snatch, Lock Stock & 2 Smoking Barrels) had the 530i (even though in the film they used a M5)

Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu (Amores Paerros) had the X5

Called ‘The Hire’ the central characters are the cars (of course) and a hired driver played by Clive Owen (The Chancer, TV Series), each film tells a story of, well a car journey…

The directors had complete creative control over these pieces, which definitely shows if anyone is familiar with any of the films I mentioned above.

Anyway this year, the executive producing gloves have been handed over to Tony & Riddley Scott (Hannibal, The Gladiator, Blade Runner) and the first film in the 2nd series kicks off (24th October) with a John Woo (Mission Impossible 2, Hard Boiled, The Killer) feature.

You can check all this out at:

www.bmwfilms.com

You can also download the first season’s films there as well.

Not to be out done, earlier this year you may have seen a film trailer called ‘Lucky Star’. Shot in and around LA Benicio Del Toro (traffic) was driving around in fat Merc SL500 being; well very lucky at everything he turned his hand to. Egg. The stock market, gambling etc.

For about 3 weeks, I was convinced that this was a film and was desperate to find out more since the 150 second clip added up to what seemed an awesome film. One night as the trailer came on again, I managed to pull a web address off the last title card www.luckyluckystar.com . Logging on that very evening I was greeted with the all too familiar 3 pronged star…. Employing Michael Mann (Heat, The Insider, Manhunter) Mercedes wanted to ‘create a trailer for a non existant film’. Unfortunately the website in question has been pulled off.

Anyway if you have the means check the Beemer movies out (at high res broadband connection if you can), and if the first seasons of films are anything to go by then the 2nd lot should be as equally amazing. And all I got left to say is “C’mon Lex. You got the cars, you got the following, flex ya’ skillz and don’t let these boys take over.’

…. And if anyone from the Lex advertising team is reading this, I can get the scripts for the new commercials to you in 48 hrs.

Enjoy!

BMW films