Finally, the much rumored about live action Speed Racer flcik has a green light. The Wachowski brothers and Joel Silver are at the helm, and while not much in the way of details have hit the newswire yet, they’re aiming for a 2008 release date, so expect to be innundated with Speed Racer paraphanalia at next summer’s Comic Cons.

From Reuters:

Brothers Larry and Andy Wachowski are writing and will direct the Warner Bros. movie, their first directorial outing since completing the “Matrix” trilogy in 2003.

Based on the classic 1960s series created by anime pioneer Tatsuo Yoshida that later was retooled for North American audiences, the big-screen “Speed” will follow the adventures of the young race car driver Speed in his quest for glory in his thundering gadget-laden vehicle, Mach 5. The movie will feature other characters from the show, including Speed’s family and his mysterious archrival, Racer X.

The film’s producer, Joel Silver, has been trying to get the feature version off the ground since the early 1990s; in 2004, Vince Vaughn even pitched a take that cast him as Racer X. When Silver worked on the spring terrorist thriller “V for Vendetta,” which the Wachowskis wrote, he approached them about tackling the project. The duo were reluctant to do it unless they could figure out a way to bring something new to the table.

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