THR has learned that Noomi Rapace (PROMETHEUS, THE DROP) is in negotiations to star alongside Christian Bale in Michael Mann's Enzo Ferrari biopic. Bale was cast as the Ferrari and Scuderia Ferrari Grand Prix motor racing team founder a couple of months ago, and Rapace is in negotiations to play Laura Dominica, Ferrari’s wife. Paramount recently also agreed to distribute Mann's passion project.
Mann has combined two different scripts for ENZO FERRARI, one by Troy Kennedy-Martin (THE ITALIAN JOB) and the other from THE FIRM scribe David Rayfiel, and both are based on the 1991 Brock Yates novel Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races.
Book synopsis from Amazon:
To his legion of admirers, Italian auto titan Enzo Ferrari (1898-1988) was a genius who personally created marvelous cars of advanced design. But as Car and Driver columnist Yates points out in this captivating, demythologizing biography, none of Ferrari's racing cars "was a glittering example of daring technology," and he had almost no hand in the making of the later road cars that bore his name. Revealed as a hot-tempered megalomaniac given to loud belching and countless amorous conquests, Ferrari fathered an illegitimate child and led a shadowy second life as a respite from the "simmering hatred" of his marriage. He portrayed himself as a loyal "motorized knight-errant," defending Italy's national honor, but in Yates's estimate he was interested solely in winning races and sometimes pushed his drivers to dangerous extremes. Yates deftly records the carnage of major races, business wheeling and dealing, and the political dimensions of motor racing from the pre-WW II Rome-Berlin Axis to today's ribbon-waving nationalism.
Mann will reportedly start production on ENZO FERRARI next summer in Italy, with a budget that is said to be in the region of $80 million.