Record-Breaking Racer Emelia Hartford Stars in 'Streets', a Film Built Around a $100 Million Lost Bugatti
Emelia Hartford — a world-record-breaking driver who recently became the fastest woman on four wheels at the Pikes Peak Hill Climb — is developing and starring in Streets, a film that pits an East Los Angeles street racing crew against a dangerous, high-stakes hunt across Southern California. The project is set up with Ali Afshar's ESX Entertainment and Warner Bros.' CrewHQ, with filming under way on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank and scheduled to wrap by the end of September 2026. (Deadline)
The engine of the story is a real-world mystery. Streets is inspired by the 1939 disappearance of Jean Bugatti's personal Type 57S Atlantic, a car widely regarded as the $100 million-plus "Holy Grail" of classic-car collecting. Jean Bugatti, son of the Italian-born founder Ettore Bugatti, drove the Atlantic as his personal vehicle before it vanished — and was never recovered. Hartford created the film's world and co-wrote the script around that cold case, transposing it into the contemporary street-racing scene of East LA.
Shaun Paul Piccinino, whose credits include Lady Driver, is directing. It marks his tenth feature with ESX Entertainment. Afshar, a world champion drag racer and the founder and CEO of the company, produces alongside Hartford and her Running Lean Productions partners Daniel Aspromonte and Sean Donohue. (Deadline)
For Hartford, Streets is also the launchpad for her new production banner. Running Lean Productions — the name a nod to her lifelong obsession with speed and efficiency on the track — is producing the film, and Hartford is represented by WME and Atlas Artists. She is a SAG-AFTRA actress whose screen credits include Sony's Gran Turismo, Apple TV's Circuits in Focus, the upcoming Fox series Hot Laps, and two Netflix films, among them A California Christmas: City Lights. (Deadline; emeliahartford.com)
She also built one of the largest automotive audiences on YouTube, with more than 600 million views — a following that gives the film a built-in constituency of car enthusiasts before a single trailer drops.
The Warner Bros. partnership has a workforce dimension. CrewHQ is a studio initiative designed to train, mentor, and cultivate the next generation of film and television crew talent in California. Streets serves as a practical launchpad for that programme, with the production drawing on CrewHQ trainees alongside the experienced ESX team. The project also secured a California Film & Television Tax Credit, the state incentive that helps keep productions filming in-state rather than chasing cheaper locations elsewhere. (Deadline)
What makes Streets stand out is the throughline from Hartford's own life to the screen. A driver who has set records on Pikes Peak — one of the most punishing motorsport events in the world — is now building a fictional story around a lost Bugatti worth nine figures, powered by a street-racing crew and a production company she founded. The chain of decisions behind every film on a screen rarely runs through a single person this completely: creator, co-writer, star, producer, and the real-world credentials to match.
