Hugh Jackman Will Star In Director Michael Mann’s FERRARI

Director Michael Mann is gearing up for his next high-powered project Ferrari, and he’s looking to cast Hugh Jackman  and Noomi Rapace (Prometheus) in the leads. The two actors are currently in talks to join the project and if they agree to join the project, 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 huge part of the story that Mann is setting out to tell, that connection 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 it will tell the “true automotive story.”

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 loose his impeccable six packs, and it’s going to be unusual seeing Jackman in a film where he’s not in shape.

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.

I am sure it will be a great movie with true to heart story and strong characters.