Add Matthew McConaughey to the list of top actors appearing in luxury automobile campaigns with Hollywood pretensions.
McConaughey has entered a multiyear deal to appear in a series of TV and digital ads for Lincoln.
The first spots, shot in and around Austin, where the native Texan McConaughey lives, are directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, who helmed 2011’s Ryan Gosling–Carey Mulligan art house thriller Drive.
Car companies are increasingly hiring A-list actors and directors to create elaborate filmed campaigns that are more ambitious in scope than the 30-second commercials for Mercedes narrated by Jon Hamm that first started airing in 2010.
Earlier this year, BMW aired three spots directed by Gus Van Zant, one of them narrated by Boardwalk Empire actor Michael Pitt, who played a character based on Kurt Cobain in Van Zant’s Last Days, to introduce its i8 plug-in hybrid sports car.
Jaguar tapped Ridley Scott‘s production company to make Desire, a 13-minute action film starring Damian Lewis and Shannyn Sossamon, to launch its F-Type convertible. The marque is currently running a campaign featuring Tom Hiddleston, Ben Kingsley and Mark Strong playing British villains.
The McConaughey campaign debuts in September.
