Hugh Jackman to Star in Director Michael Mann's FERRARI
Director Michael Mann is revving the engines on his film project Ferrari again, and he's looking to cast Hugh Jackman, hot off the success of Logan, and Noomi Rapace (Prometheus) in the leads. The two actors are currently in talks to join the project, and if they do join, Jackman will take on the role of Enzo Ferrari and Rapace will play his estranged wife, Linda.
According to Deadline, the relationship between these two characters plays a big part of the story that Mann is setting out to tell, that relationship is described as being "as fiery and combustible as the race cars that Ferrari designed."
There's a long history behind this Ferrari film project which Mann started developing 17 years ago with the late director Sydney Pollack. Christian Bale was most recently set to star in the movie, but he decided to drop out due to health concerns after he started putting on weight.
The film is based on the book, Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferarri, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans by A.J. Baimes and is said to tell the "true automotive story." It was previously reported that the movie would be called Go Like Hell.
The story is set in 1957, “a year where passion, failure, success and death and life all collided in Ferrari’s battle for supremacy against rival Maserati."
This seems like it will be another great role for Jackman to take on. It sounds like he's going to have to gain weight for the role, and it's going to be weird seeing Jackman in a film where his not in shape and completely ripped. I'm sure he'll enjoy eating real food again after having to keep on a strict diet for Wolverine.
Here’s the synopsis of the book that the film is based on:
By the early 1960s, the Ford Motor Company, built to bring automobile transportation to the masses, was falling behind. Young Henry Ford II, who had taken the reins of his grandfather’s company with little business experience to speak of, knew he had to do something to shake things up. Baby boomers were taking to the road in droves, looking for speed not safety, style not comfort. Meanwhile, Enzo Ferrari, whose cars epitomized style, lorded it over the European racing scene. He crafted beautiful sports cars, "science fiction on wheels," but was also called "the Assassin" because so many drivers perished while racing them.
"Go Like Hell" tells the remarkable story of how Henry Ford II, with the help of a young visionary named Lee Iacocca and a former racing champion turned engineer, Carroll Shelby, concocted a scheme to reinvent the Ford company. They would enter the high-stakes world of European car racing, where an adventurous few threw safety and sanity to the wind. They would design, build, and race a car that could beat Ferrari at his own game at the most prestigious and brutal race in the world, something no American car had ever done.
"Go Like Hell" transports readers to a risk-filled, glorious time in this brilliant portrait of a rivalry between two industrialists, the cars they built, and the "pilots" who would drive them to victory, or doom.
This is gonna make for a great movie. I've always like Mann's directing style, and I'm sure he's going to do something great with this one.