Amazon Orders Unscripted Le Mans Racing Series

Amazon has greenlit the original series Le Mans: Racing Is Everything, from New Black Films. The limited series will explore what is known as “the Mount Everest of motorsports,” the grueling 24-hour car race that has taken place annually in Le Mans, France, since 1923. 

Amazon says Le Mans: Racing Is Everything will offer “unprecedented access” to the entire 24 hours of the race, while exploring the legacy of Le Mans and the generations of drivers who have braved the course. Le Mans: Racing Is Everything embeds with teams Porsche, Audi, Nissan, Toyota, Aston Martin and Rebellion as they race to build their cars and compete in what is one of the highest attended single-day sporting events in the world. 

“Fans are consistently thrilled by the excitement and danger that is the annual Le Mans race. Le Mans: Racing is Everything will take that excitement to the next level, giving Prime members behind-the-scenes access to what it takes to win this singular event,” said Conrad Riggs, head of unscripted, Amazon Originals.

Le Mans: Racing Is Everything is slated to be directed by James Erskine (American Masters) and produced by Victoria Gregory (Man on Wire, Senna) and their production company New Black Films (The White Room, One Night in Turin).

“We’ll raise the veil on the pressure that racing cars to the limit puts on the teams and drivers, in a unique human-interest driven series that will take a 360 look at what it takes to participate, organize and ultimately try and win what is unquestionably the toughest race in motorsport,” said Erskine. “It’s a great privilege to bring this to screen with such strong collaborators as Amazon Prime Video. This is racing as you’ve never seen it before.”

(Photo via Steve Snodgrass's FlickrImage taken on March 6, 2017 and used per Creative Commons 2.0 license. The photo was cropped to fit 9x16 aspect ratio.)

Michael Malone

Michael Malone, senior content producer at B+C/Multichannel News, covers network programming, including entertainment, news and sports on broadcast, cable and streaming; and local broadcast television. He hosts the podcasts Busted Pilot, about what’s new in television, and Series Business, a chat with the creator of a new program, and writes the column “The Watchman.” He joined B+C in 2005. His journalism has also appeared in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Playboy and New York magazine.