Italy: Enzo Ferrari movie begins filming

Rome: Filming of a new Hollywood movie dedicated to the life of Italian motor racing icon and entrepreneur Enzo Ferrari is underway in Modena, northern Italy, with a TV series on the same subject currently in pre-production in Rome.

The film is being directed by Michael Mann and stars Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari and Penelope Cruz as his wife Laura, with Shailene Woodley playing the role of Enzo’s mistress Lina Lardi.

The new film marks a return to Italy for Driver who played Maurizio Gucci in Ridley Scott’s blockbuster House of Gucci last year.

Christian Bale was first mentioned in lead role for the Ferrari movie, then Hugh Jackman was reportedly chosen before eventually being replaced by Driver.

The film will be set in the summer of 1957 amid Ferrari’s bankruptcy concerns, his crumbling marriage and the tragedy of losing his son Dino at 24.

Against this dramatic backdrop, Ferrari made the doomed decision to enter that year’s fateful Mille Miglia car race across Italy.

The film has been in the works for the last two decades and is described by its director as a “passion project”.

With a script by the late Troy Kennedy-Martin (who wrote the screenplay for The Italian Job in 1969), the movie is inspired by the 1991 book Ferrari – The Man, The Cars, The Races, The Machine by Brock Yates.

Separately, filming is underway in Rome for an Apple television drama series also about Enzo Ferrari, written by Steven Knight, the screenwriter behind Peaky Blinders.

The series, inspired by the biography Ferrari Rex by Luca Dal Monte, will be produced by Oscar-winner Paolo Sorrentino and directed by Stefano Sollima.