CARS 3

Pixar revs up Teasers for Lightning McQueen’s return to greatness…

Vroom for one more?

Thanks to merchandise sales that eclipse even the mighty Toy Story, Cars is Pixar’s most profitable franchise, a fact that may explain why the engine is still running on a series that saw artifice superseded by art in 2011’s Eurospy spoof Cars 2. But with director Brian Fee’s Cars 3, the saga returns to its roots in American auto racing; as Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) crashes while competing against next-gen racer Jackson Storm (Armie Hammer) and seeks to reinvent himself, with the help of new trainer Cruz Ramirez (Cristela Alonzo).

Let’s Go Car-azy

“The point of the Crazy 8 sequence,” supervising technical director Michael Fong tells Total Film of the demolition derby in which Lightning gets caught on his journey, “is for McQueen to feel off balance, off his game, in an environment that’s dangerous. There’s so many layers. There’s all this mud, there’s dust and debris that’s getting kicked up that you can’t quite see through, there’s sparks, and there’s fire.”