Speed Racer/Trivia

Anime

• No Export for You: The French dub aired only in Quebec, and not in France or anywhere else.

Film

• Hey, It's That Guy!: Ben Myles of Coupling fame as a sportscaster, and Richard Roundtree as old Ben Burns.
  • The original English voice actor for Speed and Racer X plays the Race Announcer.
  • Jack Shepard as Racer X, he even has the eye tears going at one point.
  • Trixie is Wednesday Addams.
  • Susan Sarandon and John Goodman. No description needed.
  • Rain...however, no one is sure if his status in Japan helped this movie.
• Star-Derailing Role: This film basically hurt Emile Hirsch's future in Hollywood (especially after receiving much acclaim for his previous role in Into the Wild), along with Christina Ricci's career. The two have more or less disappeared into smaller projects (in Ricci's case) or gone into smaller roles (in Hirsch's case).
• What Could Have Been: Some of the people who were to work on the movie at certain points in the long, long pre-production stage: Henry Rollins and Vince Vaughn were both cast as Racer X. Johnny Depp was hired to play Speed himself. Gus Van Sant and Alfonso Cuaron were both attached to direct. J.J. Abrams was hired at one point to write the script.
  • Joel Silver said that the Wachowskis wanted to do the sequel in 3D. Alas, the film didn't make enough money to justify a sequel.
• The actors who play Rex Racer and Racer X (Scott Porter and Matthew Fox, respectively) have the same birthday.