Michael Mann’s last outing as a feature film director was eight years ago with the cyber crime film Blackhat, starring Chris Hemsworth. Now, the director of such classic films as The Last of the Mohicans and Heat returns with the story of Enzo Ferrari. Ironically, Mann had executive produced James Mangold’s 2019 racing film, Ford v Ferrari, in which the Italian brand was the main competition for the film’s protagonists. Mann’s Ferrari is naturally the story from the other side (albeit at a different time) as the film shows the auto giant navigating the issues of his personal life with the looming obstacles of an upcoming, dangerous 1,000-mile race.
The official synopsis from Neon reads,
“It is the summer of 1957. Behind the spectacle of Formula 1, ex-racer Enzo Ferrari is in crisis. Bankruptcy threatens the factory he and his wife, Laura built from nothing ten years earlier. Their volatile marriage has been battered by the loss of their son, Dino a year earlier. Ferrari struggles to acknowledge his son Piero with Lina Lardi. Meanwhile, his drivers’ passion to win pushes them to the edge as they launch into the treacherous 1,000-mile race across Italy, the Mille Miglia.”
The film stars Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Sarah Gadon, Gabriel Leone, Jack O’Connell, and Patrick Dempsey.
The screenplay was penned by scribe Troy Kennedy Martin, which he based on the book, Enzo Ferrari: The Man, The Cars, The Races, The Machine by Brock Yates. The producers of the film include Michael Mann, P.G.A, P.J. van Sandwilk, P.G.A, Marie Savare, John Lesher, P.G.A, Thomas Hayslip, John Friedberg, Laura Rister, Andrea lervolino, Monika Bacardi, Gareth West, Lars Sylvest, and Thorsten Schumacher.
With the ongoing strikes, Mann had also recently shown his pleasure of bringing a film with such a scope to audiences while not being attached to a major studio. “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.”
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