Paramount Picks Up Michael Mann’s Enzo Ferrari Biopic, Angling to Add Noomi Rapace

For a movie about a guy who developed neck-snappingly fast cars, Michael Mann’s Enzo Ferrari has been making progress at an extremely gradual pace. Mann first started toying with the idea of chronicling the life of the Italian auto pioneer (a concept first realized fictitiously on the HBO series Entourage, with the world’s greatest thespian Vinny Chase in the title role) fifteen years ago, but the film only shifted into gear earlier this year. Back in August, none other than the great Christian Bale signed on to portray the noted racer and entrepreneur in the film that’s projected to be titled simply Enzo Ferrari. The film will chronicle the man’s experiences in 1957, when a Ferrari-made car spun off the racetrack and took the lives of nine onlookers, five of whom were children.

A couple months after the announcement of Bale’s commitment, and TheWrap brings the news of a pair of exciting developments attesting to this film’s pre-production progress. First off, Paramount has hastily seized the rights for domestic distribution of Enzo Ferrari, and though no projected date of release has been set, that’s the first big hurdle for the production to clear. They still need a cast, but Mann and Paramount are on top of that as well. Employing the sort of half-language so favored by entertainment trade papers, The Wrap writes that the OG girl with the dragon tattoo, Noomi Rapace, has entered “early talks” to co-star as Ferrari’s wife Laura Dominica. This could mean “she’s doing it, we’re just not 100 percent sure yet” just as easily as it could mean “some guy said it could happen,” but that’s certainly an appealing prospect nonetheless. Though she has yet to score a breakout role in a domestic picture, Rapace has demonstrated a bit of range with choice turns in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and last year’s gritty drama The Drop alongside the late great James Gandolfini.

The real question concerns Mann’s ability to get it together and actually do this thing. Mann devotees remember the six long years they were made to wait for January’s Blackhat, and nobody’s eager to go through that again. What with an overseas production and Mann’s rumored use of film stock instead of digital to shoot this one, it could be a slow approach for this film about fast cars.