'Need for Speed' Movie Providing Synonym for Studios Wanting 'Fast' Franchise

This must have been what Jason Statham was holding out for.

Variety reports all the major studios (except Universal, who already has a whole lunchpail full of cars and muscle guys) are competing to win the movie rights to Need for Speed, publisher Electronic Arts' game series about driving cool cars. The idea is to turn the popular franchise into something in the vein of the Fast movies, if that wasn't implicit enough already.

Paramount is said to be the frontrunner for the package, which includes more than just the title and concept of driving cool cars: EA already had Real Steel screenwriters George and John Gatins write a script to fill in what cool cars are driven, where they drive, and what people say when they aren't driving cars. Those details are still being kept hidden, but there may be some clues in that the last game--the 18th in the series and the first to bother with a plot--involved Never Back Down's Sean Harris and Drive's Christina Hendricks racing from San Francisco to New York City. So maybe something like Cannonball Run, but now Dom DeLuise would be bustier.