Gore Vebrinski and Steve Conrad Team for Untitled Driverless Car Race

Director and writer reteam for action-comedy…

Deadline reports that Gore Vebrinski is stepping behind the camera to direct an untitled action-adventure comedy about a transcontinental race between driver-less cars for Sony Pictures.

The race originates as a beta test to vet competing software companies that will take the lead on autonomous vehicles, but devolves into ‘It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World’ territory when the passengers in the test cars try to take control of the experiment. A simple trek from Paris to Beijing, goes awry as vehicles head off the road and off the grid, getting into all kinds of trouble.

Screenwriter Steve Conrad (‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’), who previously worked with Vebrinski on the ill-fated film cancelled ‘Pyongyang,’ will be penning the script.

“Essentially, we are going to take the funniest comedic actors of this generation and slowly unleash them as we examine the very notion of ‘passengers’ who fundamentally cannot remain passive,” Verbinski said to Deadline.

Conrad added, “We want to invert the whole premise of a road trip where the promise has always been, ‘anything can happen,’ and say, ‘what if anything can’t happen’? What does that do to the test subject? What are the breaking points?”