Contrary to most other types of consumers, the gamer loves their advertising. Gamers are well acquainted with the excitement that comes from the hype train leading up to the release of a game. From the acapella-rap song made for the marketing of the cult classic Mercenaries 2 to Halo 3''s ominous "Finish the Fight" diorama trailer, these campaigns come along with advertising media that go on to live in the memories of the aging gamer. One of these pieces of media that came to mind recently was the "Pagani vs. Lamborghini" film EA had made for the upcoming release of 2010's Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit reboot.

Beginning in 2008, EA developed a three-pronged answer to the declining sales of the NFS franchise in the form of adding two more development studios under their umbrella. EA Black Box had begun its claim to fame with the Playstation 2 port of Hot Pursuit 2, which became the console's 96th best-selling game in the U.S., and consistently received better scores than the other ports for Gamecube and Xbox. Black Box would then go on to develop a new iteration in the franchise every year, each game becoming a time capsule of the popular car culture at the time. Most notably, Black Box is responsible for the blockbuster success of 2005's Most Wanted during the seventh console generation. With the rising popularity of the Fast and Furious franchise during the early 2000s, EA Black Box had created a completely new identity for the NFS franchise that left behind its exotic roots and went for a grittier, cinematic tone that would go on to define the series during this period.

With the rise of Midnight Club, Forza Motorsport, and legendary Gran Turismo, gamers would find the customization gameplay that was once exclusive to the NFS franchise in a much more curated and premium experience. Each of these games took years in between each iteration to further develop their fundamental gameplay experience, which was contrary to the "Guitar Hero-itis" the franchise was suffering from at the time. This criticism reached a fever-pitch with the release of 2008's Undercover, which was widely panned as a complete misunderstanding of what the fan base wanted out of a NFS game. Taking a page from Activision's playbook, EA would answer by bringing in two studios with competent development teams to create three-year development cycles for yearly releases. This would mean the consumer would receive three different flavors of NFS for the next few years. EA Black Box would serve the fans who wanted the games to be story-driven and modification-heavy like Most Wanted, with their free-to-play World PC game and the cult-classic The Run. Slightly Mad Studios was also acquired to further develop the closed-course simcade racing of 2007's ProStreet, as they would go on to incorporate their Madness engine creating the Shift spinoff series. That left one main group of fans that wanted an answer, those who wanted the gameplay to have long overcresting hills, high-revving engine soundtracks, and plenty of police cars to avoid in your million-dollar supercar.

High off the success of their latest game, Criterion Games was an EA-owned studio best known at the time for their well-crafted, high-impact, blisteringly fast racing gameplay found in the Burnout series. Burnout Paradise had cemented itself as a staple in gamer's video game libraries diuring the early days of the eighth generation, with its intuitive gameplay and addictive crash physics. One thing Burnout was known for was the Grand Theft Auto-like renditions of real-life vehicles that appear in the games since car manufacturers restricted the amount of damage the car could display in the game. This left a gap in the market for a game that could incorporate the physics of a Burnout Game with licensed vehicles of a Need for Speed game. Once all development for Burnout Paradise was wrapped up, the ideas of making a game like this left Criterion and EA with a "revolutionary take on Need for Speed", one that would reboot a long-lost name in the franchise but cannibalize one of the most legendary franchises in the racing game genre. 

One of the pieces of marketing media made for the game was a film adaptation of the original E3 trailer, which showcased cars from Koenigsegg and Bugatti racing through the hills of Seacrest County in high-speed pursuit. In order to bring this concept to life, EA's at-the-time Marketing VP Keith Munro enlisted the help of Runimation Studios to film and produce the trailer, as well as getting WTCC champion Marc Hennerici and to-be FIA GT1 champion Marc Basseng as stunt drivers for the film. In the course of a partner meeting between EA, Pagani, and Lamborghini, they came up with the idea of recreating the game's branding which showcased the recently released Pagani Zonda Cinque and Lamborghini Reventon.

As the name implies, all five of the ultra-rare Cinques were already spoken for by the time filming came around, they had been delivered to the owners the past summer. This left Pagani to create a production Cinque mock-up out of the in-house test mule known as "La Nonna", or the grandmother in Italian, also known as "Prototipo 2." Starting life as an original Zonda C12, La Nonna was the test bed for every Zonda evolution thereafter, racking up more mileage than any other Zonda on Earth. Coming hot off the production of the Cinque road cars, the test mule was a perfect fit for the task since most of the body modifications to make it resemble a production Cinque had already been made. The car was then wrapped in a bright orange wrap to match the car on the concept art provided by EA.

Lamborghini, on the other hand, did not have a Reventon look-alike ready for filming and provided EA with a regular Murcielago LP 640 to use for the film instead. Keith details that the LP 640 was sent to Lamborghini's official body shop in Modena, Italy to install the roof-mounted police lights and wrap the car in the game's signature Seacrest Police Department livery. Presumably not much was done to prepare the car for filming, as the production road car is robust enough for stunts through VW's rigorous component testing. Once complete, it was sent to the Alps to meet with the rest of the production crew to begin filming.

The Dolomite Alps were chosen for filming as they closely resembled the Eagle Crest region of Seacrest County, which reaches the highest altitudes in the game. It consists of long winding two-lane roads with mountainside views, those reminiscent of old school car films like 1969's The Italian Job. The film required the specific expertise of Runimation Studios, one of the few production studios at the time that had hands-on experience with filming a car like the Zonda. Director Rober Elder had directed the original advertising for the Zonda R earlier that year and felt like a perfect fit for the project. The film follows the orange Cinque drifting up the mountainside, encountering the SCPD LP 640 along the way. The cop car chases the racer up the mountain pass and sets up a roadblock ahead of the racer. The racer evades the spike strip and encounters a new foe: the Bell 206 helicopter following its tail. The helicopter sets up another spike strip, causing the racer to do a 180 and drive straight toward the pursuing cop car. The two cars spot each other on the road and come to a stop, they are in a Mexican standoff. The racer and cop rev their engines, race down the road to play chicken, and the video cuts to black, finnito.