Not long after the trailer for Michael Mann’s trailer for Ferrari premiered online, the film’s cast arrived at the Venice Film Festival with SAG-AFTRA waiver in tow that grants them the special privilege to promote the film. The film looks to be an epic depiction of this particular era of Enzo Ferrari’s life, and surprisingly, such a production isn’t headed up by a major film studio. Instead, the indie company Neon is distributing Ferrari. Mann stated, “The origins of the movie and the content of the screenplay and the movie that you saw do not fit into the kind of film that would be embraced by the conventional studio system. It’s truly appropriate that it is an independent film being distributed by Neon, a very independent distributor.”
The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that the film’s star, Adam Driver, spoke on the Neon company being able to allow their business with the movie to continue by complying to SAG-AFTRA’s stipulations. “Why is it that a smaller distribution company like Neon or STX International can meet the dream demands of what SAG is asking for in this pre-negotiation but a big company like Netflix and Amazon can’t? Every time people from SAG go and support a movie that has agreed to these terms — the interim agreement — it just makes it more obvious that these people are willing to support the people that they collaborate with, and the others are not. So when this opportunity came up, it seemed like — understanding the interim agreement — a no-brainer for all of these reasons of why you want to support your union.”
Michael Mann shared the sentiment when stating, “Ferrari got made because the people who worked on Ferrari made it by forgoing large sectors of salaries, in the case of Adam and myself. It was not made by a big studio — no big studio wrote us a check. And that’s why we’re here, standing in solidarity.” The director of Heat and The Last of the Mohicans would also go on to show his support by saying those involved with the film are “individually and collectively we all stand in total solidarity with SAG and the writers guild strike as well.”