Matthew Fox Signs Up For Hokey Speed Racer Remake

It's a well-known fact that Matthew Fox is just about the only member of the Lost cast who is able to drive a car without ballsing things up spectacularly - so maybe that's why the Wachowski brothers have signed him up for their Speed Racer film.

The Wachowski brothers have finally decided to answer the question "How do you follow The Matrix?" - they've answered it by declaring "We're going to remake a gay-looking 40-year-old Japanese cartoon about a boy with a magical car - and we're going to have the boring main character from Lost in it, too. Plus the Dad from Roseanne." That's Speed Racer, and we sure as hell can't wait.

The Wachowski brothers are fond of casting dumb-looking blandly handsome men as the leads in the films - yes Keanu, we mean you - and the most dumb-looking blandly handsome men of them all at the moment is Matthew Fox from Lost. So it's no surprise that the Wachowski brothers have roped in Matthew Fox to star as the lead in their new Speed Racer movie - about a big-eyed boy who solves mysteries by, um, driving a car around a race course quite quickly. Or something.

Matthew Fox is so dumb-looking and blandly handsome that he's possibly the only member of the Lost cast to keep out of trouble since the show began. Matthew Fox hasn't been held up at gunpoint or married someone and then divorced them six months later. Matthew Fox didn't burn his house down or get arrested for driving like an idiot. And Matthew Fox certainly didn't get banged up for shouting "I don't fucking belong here! Why don't you just put a gun to my head a shoot me!" at a policeman.

No. Matthew Fox didn't need trouble because he was the number one star of Lost, the show that everybody loved. But now that Lost is the show that everybody gets confused and frustrated by and hardly watches any more, Matthew Fox has decided to go and do something else. Like Speed Racer, as Reuters reports:

Larry and Andy Wachowski are adding "Lost" star Matthew Fox to their "Speed Racer" vehicle. Fox is in final negotiations to play Racer X in the live-action update of the 1960s cartoon, which the brothers behind the "Matrix" franchise are writing and directing… Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, Susan Sarandon and John Goodman already are on board the film, which will shoot in the summer in Berlin. Warner Bros. is eyeing a summer 2008 bow.

Hopes are high for Speed Racer - a remake of Japanese TV show Mach Go Go Go loved by anime fans and generations of excitable TV-hungry children with equal measure. We're not sure what Matthew Fox will bring to the role, apart from a smaller salary than Keanu Reeves, but so long as the Japanese theme-tune to Speed Racer is faithfully reproduced - "His hand-woven scarf flutters in the wind!/ He cannot tolerate the shame of defeat!" - we'll be happy enough.

And if Matthew Fox and the Wachowski brothers make Speed Racer into a success, maybe they'll finally start returning our calls about making a big-budget action blockbuster based on Gimme Gimme Octopus too. 

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Lost Star Fox Tunes Up For Speed Ride - Reuters