Speed Racer

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Speed Racer Trivia

The view inside Speed's locker at the start of the film shows his watch to be a Heuer Monaco Sportiva, the same watch worn by Steve McQueen in the classic racing film Le Mans.
Milka Duno, who plays Kellie "Gearbox" Kalinkov, is an actual professional race car driver in the Indy Racing League.
WILHELM SCREAM: When Spritle and Chim-Chim are rummaging through Royalton Industries.
Rose McGowan was seriously considered for the part of Trixie, but the directors felt she was too old.
Technically, Speed Racer was a first in many areas but two stand-out. It was the first film to use the Sony F23 Digital Film Camera and also to record in parallel to Sony HDCAM SR, for archive masters, and to Codex Digital Data Recorders for on-set uncompressed HD playback, digital dailies and file generation for editing and VFX.
Some prints were shipped to movie theaters under the name "Race Chasers".
In the first race, where Speed is in the criss-crossing section with Rex Racer's "ghost car", their motion resembles the fighter plane attack maneuver called the "Thach Weave", invented by US Navy pilot John S. Thach in World War II.
Keanu Reeves turned down the role of Racer X.
In the original draft of the script, Royalton's name was Remmington.
In a number of scenes, the "bokeh" (out of focus points of light) are shaped differently than the usual circles or ovals. The most obvious of these is when young Speed sees Trixie for the first time - the unfocused lights become hearts. In the Royalton's opulent club, they are shaped as diamonds, and in a number of the race scenes, they are squares or rectangles.
Peter Fernandez's final movie debut.
Director Alfonso Cuarón was once attached to direct with Johnny Depp starring.
Shot in 60 days.
Zac Efron was originally casted as Speed Racer, but was soon replaced with Emile Hirsch.
All the people that do a lot of driving in the movie did it in a "gimble" - a cockpit of car attached to a hydraulic system that had the race sequences programmed into them.
With the race cars being totally fictional, most of the pedestrian cars are actually based on real-life futuristic concept cars (one can easily spot an orange Rinspeed E-GO Rocket parked at the nearest to the screen when Rex picks Speed up from school). At one point, two Peugeot concept cars (the award-winning Peugeot 4002 Lion design and the quirky Moonster) are seen as well.
Peter Fernandez, the voice of Speed Racer and Racer X in the original cartoon series, plays the Race Announcer in this movie.
At one point, after winning a race, Speed jumps out of his car while it still moves and strikes a pose as his car slows and stops just behind him. This is the trademark pose of Speed Racer, shown during the cartoon's opening credits. (In addition, as the lights flash in the grandstand behind Speed, they briefly dissolve into the cartoon sequence's signature red-and-gold checker background.)
Emile Hirsch was a big fan of the Speed Racer (Dubbed) show, and used to watch it on Cartoon Network.
According to producer Joel Silver, this movie was largely shot in green screen.
Danica Patrick was reportedly offered a cameo but declined secondary to racing commitments with Andretti Green Racing and the Indy Racing League.
SPOILER: Scott Porter and Matthew Fox, who play the same character at different ages, have the same birthday of July 14th.