Reporting out of the Cannes Virtual Market via Deadline has revealed that Michael Mann’s upcoming film Ferrari is now seeking distribution partners next week.
They’re also expected to begin shooting Ferrari by next spring.
The film will chart the summer of 1957 when all the forces in Ferrari’s life – which were often as combustible and volatile as the iconic race cars he built – collided. The now legendary car company he and his wife Laura built was at the time going broke. Their tempestuous marriage had already suffered the death of their son, Dino, and Ferrari’s other son, 12-year old Piero, the product of a wartime romance, was struggling to find his place in the world.
The entrepreneur rolled the dice for all their futures on one race – 1,000 miles across Italy, the brutal and infamous 1957 Mille Miglia. The film will be framed so that during the highly dangerous race, Laura discovers long kept secrets, we see opportunities rise and fade, and drivers, who are like surrogate sons, are pushed beyond the edge.
X-Men actor Hugh Jackman is currently in discussions to play the Enzo Ferrari role, but there isn’t word about who will play Laura.
They also reveal that Mann has reworked the script that was originally penned by Italian Job and Kelly’s Heroes screenwriter Troy Kennedy Martin, who passed in 2009. Michael has been trying to get the film made for almost two decades.
Ferrari’s resurgence certainly comes at the right time after James Mangold’s own racing biopic Ford v Ferrari from 2019 did okay at the box office and earned a handful of Oscar nominations including Best Picture. I’m sure both Mann and Jackman see the film as potential awards contender.
STX will distribute Ferrari in the UK and Ireland.
STX is now handling international sales and will directly distribute the film in the UK and Ireland. We understand Amazon is tying up a deal to bolster international with STX and has been integral in the process. CAA Media Finance arranged the financing and is repping domestic.
Mann was in the middle of shooting the pilot episode of HBO Max’s Tokyo Vice in Japan before the Coronavirus pandemic paused filming. Hugh Jackman most recently starred in the HBO film Bad Education and had wrapped on the Warner Bros. sci-fi thriller Reminiscence directed by Westworld’s Lisa Joy.
SOURCE: DEADLINE
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