The world of the Cars movies is a bizarre one that looks remarkably like our own considering that it's only inhabited by sentient automobiles. It turns out that one way our worlds are similar is in its choice of superhero movies. Cars 3 director Brian Fee recently revealed that in an earlier version of the script, Lightning McQueen would have found himself in Hollywood, where he would have crossed paths with the celebrity actors of the Cars world, specifically, the Batmobile. According to Fee...
At one point, part of the story took place in LA and we had a scene where McQueen went to a Hollywood Hills party and it was full of actors. So we had the old Batmobile and the new Batmobile talking to each other at a party. They're the actors of the world.
If you've seen Cars 3 you know that the movie never goes to Los Angeles and Brian Fee confirms that this scene was cut after the script ended up going in a different direction, but he tells Screen Junkies that the scene would have involved two different iterations of the Batmobile appearing in a scene together. One would assume that in Cars world the Batmobile is a weird hybrid of both the vehicle that we know, and Batman himself.
Brian Fee doesn't elaborate on the scene so we don't know exactly what it would have looked like, but we're imagining a talking version of Adam West's TV Batmobile in conversation with Christian Bale's tank. Optimally, if the scene had made it into the final film, we hope they would have been able to get the actors themselves to voice the roles.
The best part is that this idea that cars playing the characters in Cars versions of movies that we know in the real world actually has some history in the franchise. During the closing credits of the original Cars we're treated to a scene where Lightning McQueen and his friends are all at the drive-in watching movies. There, we get scenes from the Cars version of several Pixar films. Check it out.
A couple months ago I had a chance to speak with the writers of Cars 3 and I learned that the movie was a very different story originally. While the decision to focus the story on Lightning McQueen again was always there, it wasn't until Mike Rich was brought on board that the movie began to evolve into a more traditional "sports movie" narrative. If the Cars franchise continues, maybe we'll get to see "Cars Hollywood" in some future installment. Cars 3 is in theaters now.
