Paramount Revs Up for Ferrari Movie With Christian Bale and Noomi Rapace

Michael Mann will direct the film.

Paramount Pictures has picked up distribution rights to Michael Mann’s long-in-the-works Ferrari project, titled Enzo Ferrari.

At the same time, Noomi Rapace is in talks to star opposite Christian Bale, who will play Enzo Ferrari, the Italian auto mogul. The long-gestating project finally got traction when it secured funding from Vendian and YooZoo Bliss Film Fund. YooZoo will distribute the movie in China, while Vincent Maraval’s Insiders will begin selling territories at AFM.

The project adapts the 1991 book Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races, the Machine, written by Brock Yates.

The book recounted Ferrari’s ascent — working for Alfa Romeo, first as a racer and then as a developer, founding his own company in 1947, racing victories in the '50s and '60s, letting Fiat slowly take control of the company. But it also showed Ferrari's tyrannical and manipulative nature, how he pushed drivers to the breaking point (and even death), his hatred of his lifelong marriage and his many affairs.

If a deal is made, Rapace would play Ferrari’s wife, Laura Dominica.

The project is eyeing an $80 million budget, although Mann has a tendency to skid his numbers higher when actual shooting starts.

The last time Mann worked with Paramount was in 2004, when the studio released Collateral, the DreamWorks-made thriller starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx.