The Hollywood sequel machine is reportedly working on a new Bullitt movie, a continuation of the 1968 Steve McQueen detective thriller. Now, Steven Spielberg, who helmed blockbusters like Jaws, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Saving Private Ryan, is reportedly attached to direct it.
The original Bullitt is considered to contain one of the best car chases ever committed to film. A ten-minute cat-and-mouse sequence has Det. Frank Bullitt (McQueen) in a then-new Highland Green Ford Mustang fastback taking on a similar-era black Dodge Charger through the San Francisco cityscape.
According to Deadline Hollywood, who broke the news of Spielberg’s project, the director “had been toying with the idea to direct a film based on [Frank Bullitt] for some time.” Its sources say that it won’t be a remake, but a new story around the Frank Bullitt character. McQueen’s son Chad and granddaughter Molly are also attached as producers.
Whatever it turns out to be — if anything at all in the fickle world of Hollywood — we’d wager that a car chase would be a prerequisite. That’s because the original Bullitt‘s 1-hour-53-minute plot is painfully slow. If it weren’t for the scenes of shrieking V8s jumping through San Francisco’s hilly streets, the movie would be utterly forgettable. In fact, we’d argue that it is, but for its routine appearance on “Best Car Chase” lists that keep it somewhat relevant.
Ford has even parlayed that original appearance into several special edition Mustangs over the years. Due to its fame among car enthusiasts and Mustang fans, the original sold at auction in 2020 for $3.74 million.
Spielberg is a talented director and somewhat of a car enthusiast himself. He counts 1971’s Vanishing Point among his favorite films, and has had interesting cars to many of his works, whether striking up a deal with Lexus to design a concept for 2002’s Minority Report because he liked his own LX 470, or including a Volvo P1800 in Bridge or Spies. Also, one of his Spielberg’s earliest films was 1971’s Duel, essentially a 90-minute car chase starring a Plymouth Valiant.
While there have been better car chases — and better car chases contained in better overall movies (Ronin, anyone?) — since Bullitt, with Spielberg behind the camera the revival has potential to bring back a proper car chase flick to the silver screen, hopefully without the computer-generated nonsense that has overtaken modern action scenes.
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Source: www.autoblog.com