Michael Mann may not have gotten to the checkered flag with the story of the rivalry between Ford and Ferrari at Le Mans (that victory went to James Mangold and Le Mans '66), but he's back and ready to move ahead with Ferrari, the biopic of the driving force behind one of those teams and the company that sponsored it. the director has been aiming to make since at least 2015. He has Adam Driver (the jokes wrote themselves), Penélope Cruz and Shailene Woodley ready to star.
It's the summer of 1957. Former race car driver, Enzo Ferrari (Driver), is in crisis. All the dramatic forces of his life – as volatile as the red race cars he builds - are in collision. Bankruptcy stalks the company he and his wife, Laura (Cruz), built from nothing ten years earlier. Their tempestuous marriage struggles with the mourning for one son and the acknowledgement of another (Piero, born to Enzo's mistress Lina Lardi, played by Woodley).
The passionate instigator of men inspires his Spring Team of drivers, some like surrogate sons. He blunts a hostile press with strafing wit and boldly strategizes to roll the dice on one race – 1,000 miles across Italy, the infamous Mille Miglia. As the red cars slam through towns and mountain passes towards unpredictable outcomes, the future of these vivid characters’ lives are being written.
Mann wrote the script with The Italian Job's Troy Kennedy Martin (adapting Brock Yates’ book Enzo Ferrari – The Man And The Machine) and is gearing up to shoot this May in Italy. "Being able to have these wonderfully talented artists, actors Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz and Shailene Woodley, bring to life these unique characters on location in Modena and the Emilia-Romagna is a vision fulfilled," says the writer/director.
STXfilms has nabbed the rights to distribute the eventual film worldwide, but has not yet set a release date. Is the world ready for Driver to try another Italian accent after House Of Gucci? Now we'll find out...