EXCLUSIVE, UPDATED with extra particulars, affirmation from Neon: Neon has acquired distribution rights to Ferrari, the Michael Mann-directed epic movie starring Adam Driver and Penélope Cruz. It’ll get a Christmas Day 2023 theatrical launch.
The film is anticipated to make its world premiere on the Venice Movie Pageant. It is among the most eagerly awaited movies of the movie-awards season, and Neon can be a powerful driver for the image. It closed the acquisition of the movie in a extremely aggressive North American deal and I heard A24, one other studio and a streamer had been additionally within the combine.
“Michael Mann, one of the most innovative and influential filmmakers in American cinema, was moved by the power of this intensely dramatic story to persist for years to bring it to the big screen,” Neon CEO and founder Tom Quinn mentioned Monday. “Ferrari reaffirms Neon’s continued commitment to supporting visionary auteurs who push the boundaries of cinema. Working with Michael Mann on Ferrari is a dream come true for Neon.”
Driver stars as Enzo Ferrari and Cruz as Laura Ferrari, with the solid together with Shailene Woodley as Ferrari’s mistress Lina Lardi, Jack O’Connell as Peter Collins, Sarah Gadon as Linda Christian, Patrick Dempsey as Piero Taruffi and Gabriel Leone as Alfonso De Portago.
Set through the summer season of 1957, the pic finds ex-System 1 racer Enzo Ferrari in disaster. Chapter stalks the corporate he and his spouse, Laura, constructed from nothing 10 years earlier. Their tempestuous marriage struggles with the mourning for his or her one son. Ferrari struggles with the acknowledgement of one other. His drivers’ lust to win pushes them out to the sting. He wagers all in a roll of the cube on one race, the treacherous 1,000-mile race throughout Italy, the long-lasting Mille Miglia.
The script was penned by Troy Kennedy Martin (The Italian Job) based mostly on Brock Yates’ ebook. Mann can also be producing through his Moto Footage banner alongside P.J. van Sandwijk and John Lesher, in addition to Marie Savare, John Friedberg, Lars Sylvest, Thorsten Schumacher and Gareth West.
Mann shot a lot of the movie in Modena, Italy, the place Enzo Ferrari was born and constructed his empire. I met Mann there final August for a chunk on the publication of Warmth 2, which turned a large and well-reviewed bestseller based mostly on his seminal crime thriller movie, and which he’ll flip into a movie at Warner Bros. His Ferrari star Adam Driver is hooked up to play a younger Neil McCauley, the profession thief performed by Robert De Niro within the unique. On the time I visited, Mann was again to examine progress on the composite race automobiles constructed for the race scenes, accessorized by mounts to carry the cameras that may inject a unique actuality to the frantic and freewheeling races that had been as fashionable in Europe as soccer. These replicas stood beside the classic precise Ferrari and Maserati automobiles used within the 1957 race Mann is depicting. Mann mentioned these automobiles go for between $20 million-$80 million and had been loaned by a small group that features Nick Mason, the Pink Floyd drummer and avid classic automobile collector. The younger drivers had been movie-star good-looking daredevils who attracted probably the most stunning ladies on the planet, although careening round twisty streets at 180 MPH worn out a lot of them in horrifying accidents as a result of the automobiles afforded them little crash safety.
“The story comes from human behavior that’s unique and very, very different, but it’s also the contradiction in our lives,” Mann advised me on the time. “It had so much of the real condition of our human lives, and really passionately wanting something you know it’s damaging and you want it anyway. That could be anything from libido to the ecstasy of mastering one of these cars, and what does that mean, mastering cars? It’s not driving a car masterfully. It means that you’re a human being and you can create a machine that will exceed what I as a human being or other human beings have been able to do up to that point. There’s a tremendous romance to that, but that impulse to exceed limits, whether it’s NASA, painting, making movies, that’s such a human strong impulse and it gets you in a lot of trouble. There’s a scene where a young driver for Ferrari gets killed, and there’s a funeral cortege, and the women in black and they’re really good looking. That happened all the time. Not to get too flirty with it, but there’s a connection between death and sex and the way these things really look. I think there’s a real subliminal sense of when you’re around death, you’re by a ghost of procreation. It’s almost like we’re programmed for this.”
This can be a giant one for Neon, whose latest file of success with awards-season pics contains its Finest Image success with Parasite after Bong Joon Ho’s pic gained the Palme d’Or in Cannes in 2019. It kicked off a streak of 4 Palmes in a row for Neon with Titane (2021), Triangle of Disappointment (2022) and Anatomy of a Fall (2023). Triangle of Disappointment scored six Oscar nominations final yr.
The indie distributor additionally landed Wim Wenders’ Excellent Days and Pablo Berger’s Robotic Desires from Cannes this yr.
Ferrari now joins Neon’s 2023 storage that already homes Eileen, the Anne Hathaway and Thomasin McKenzie starrer from William Oldroyd set to launch in This fall; Kitty Inexperienced’s The Royal Lodge, starring Julia Garner; Sanctuary from Zachary Wigon, starring Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott; and one among its first in-house productions, Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool.
The Ferrari deal was negotiated by Dan Friedkin, Ryan Friedkin and Quinn for Neon with CAA Media Finance and legal professional Harold Brown of Gang Tyre Ramer & Brown on behalf of Mann.
Friedkin, the Crucial Leisure principal, can be a key participant right here as Ferrari revs in Europe. Friedkin is the proprietor and president of the Italian Serie A membership AC Roma, and I anticipate him to be an vital ally in selling the movie. Friedkin has two massive movies within the upcoming Oscar race. The opposite is Killers of the Flower Moon, which he and Crucial’s Bradley Thomas acquired in an announcement making $5 million of the David Grann ebook which has become the Martin Scorsese-directed drama that opened at Cannes to raves, starring Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone and Jesse Plemons.
