It will have a fuel tanker engulfed in flames bouncing across the arena, a jack-knifed lorry pursued by screeching Honda Civic EJ1s, at least two tanks, a souped-up Dodge Charger and a bright orange Lamborghini, obviously, and a submarine crashing through the ice.
“It is not a real Akula-class submarine,” said Rowland French regretfully, who is the creative brains behind the live arena show that he believes is one of the biggest and most ambitious ever staged. “Much as I would like to have the opportunity to play with a real one. It will look like one though.”
Directly based on The Fast and the Furious franchise, the proudly, ludicrously, enjoyably over-the-top action movies, the £25m show is set to open in London in January before going to venues in the UK and Europe and after that, the world.
Producers on Thursday invited the first journalists to a “secret” base in the East Midlands countryside to unveil details of an arena show they believe will be a gamechanger, nothing less than “the most spectacular live arena production” there has ever been.
James Cooke-Priest, one of the three British producers behind the show, said it would rank alongside other pioneering moments of entertainment history. “For me personally it was Cirque du Soleil which reinvented the circus, Pixar and Toy Story for animation and iPod for music. They raised the expectations of what was possible.”
That is clearly a bold statement, offering no place to hide. But this is a passion project that French, Cooke-Priest and fellow producer Chris Hughes have been working on for five years to get right. The idea was to make a theatre show that has a story and actors and of course an insane amount of high-octane vehicle action.
French, who worked on Top Gear and then was the creative director of Top Gear Live, admitted writing the story for Fast and Furious Live long before pitching it to anyone.
“No one asked me to write the show and I can’t work out if that’s sad or not,” he said. “I wrote the whole show from beginning to end.”
He is of course a fan of the movies – “I must have watched the first three 30 or 40 times” – and a petrolhead. “I love modified cars. Even at my age I still have a modified car. I have a supercharged M3 which is very childish … it doesn’t get in to car parks or over speed bumps.”
French’s concept is to take 18 real stunts from the movies and recreate them in a two-hour show with actors and a narrative.
“Previously car shows involved monster trucks or jumping motorcycles or perhaps three old men racing Reliant Robins around the stage.”
The three British producers successfully pitched it to Universal Pictures, the films’ producer, more than four years ago.
French insisted the show will appeal to a wider audience than young men who can’t get a girlfriend. “It’s like what Cirque du Soleil did for circus. You don’t just have to like watching cars doing endless burn-ups and doughnuts to be interested.”
Is it sexist to suggest that it is only men who like fast cars? “My wife would certainly say so, she is a fast car lover.”
The movies star shaven-headed muscle men such as Vin Diesel and The Rock but also have many alpha female characters, notably Michelle Rodriguez, who plays the best driver, Letty.
The young British actor Elysia Wren, only a year out of drama school, has been cast as the live show’s alpha female character.
“I feel utterly blessed to be part of this,” she said. “This is not where I thought I would be. I was a fan of the movies. I don’t know all the absolute details of the cars but I love the storylines and I’m such a huge fan of Michelle Rodriguez.”
She rejected the notion they were boys’ films. “They appeal to everyone, they have really powerful female characters, the music is great, the car chases are great, there’s a crime aspect. The character I’m playing is an alpha female so that is empowering.”
Wren admitted she was not a petrolhead. It took her five times to pass her test and she drives a 15-year-old Vauxhall Astra. “I’m an OK driver. They are teaching me how to drift … they have been very patient with me but I’ll get there, I’ll get there.”
French said 45% of the production staff are female and three of the 11 stunt drivers on what will be a five-year tour are women.
The drivers, chosen from 2,000 people who applied, are seven weeks in to a 16-week training schedule that is being described more as choreography than driving.
French said they would be using special effects and 3D projection mapping in ways that had never been attempted.
The producers said about £15m is being spent on stunts and £10m taking the show on tour. In total there will 41 vehicles, 67 touring crew and 70 tonnes of rigging that will fit in 36 transporter trucks.
The first glimpses of the show do indeed look spectacular but the bigger things are, the harder they fall. In 2009 Ben Hur Live was was billed as the biggest-ever indoor spectacular and it was something of a flop. The Guardian’s Michael Billington wrote: “Good intentions and vast resources are no substitute for vision and theatrical imagination.”
French and his colleagues brim with confidence, however, and have released dates for an arena tour – beginning at London’s O2 on 19 January 2018 – which will visit 23 cities in 14 European countries. After that there will be tours in the US, central and south America in 2019-20, China and Asia in 2021, and a return to Europe in 2022.
They promise that the show will appeal to many different people, not just car nerds. Having said that, it will definitely appeal to fans who understand the lengths they have gone to in recreating Fast and Furious cars.
Take the Lamborghini owned by Brian, played by the actor Paul Walker who died in a car accident during but unconnected to the filming of the seventh film.
“It is believed to be the only one-to-one replica,” said French, bursting with pride. “We used the three coats of the Lamborghini orange for our car which no one ever does, it is three slightly different shades. It’s perfect.”