Penélope Cruz is revving her engines for a new role…
The 47-year-old Spanish Oscar-winning actress, who earned an Academy Award nod this week, will star in director Michael Mann’s passion project Ferrari.
Cruz is among a roster of All-Star cast members that includes Adam Driver and Shailene Woodley for the big-budget biopic of racing mogul Enzo Ferrari.
Driver is replacing Hugh Jackman in the title role while Parallel Mothers star Cruz will play Enzo’s wife Laura. Woodley will play mistress Lina Lardi.
Four-time Oscar nominee Mann is gearing up for a May start in Italy.
STX is handling international rights and has now picked up the domestic rights in a big deal with Mann. Amazon is aboard in a handful of international markets. STX International will look to close remaining deals this week with some big international pacts already secured, including Leone in Italy.
The movie, which Mann has been working on for two decades, is set during the summer of 1957. Ex-racecar driver, Ferrari, is in crisis. Bankruptcy stalks the company he and his wife, Laura, built from nothing ten years earlier. Their tempestuous marriage struggles with the mourning for one son and the acknowledgement of another. He decides to counter his losses by rolling the dice on one race – 1,000 miles across Italy, the iconic Mille Miglia.
The project has famously been through multiple iterations, but this is as far along as the casting has been at any stage.
Mann will direct from a script by Troy Kennedy and Mann based on Brock Yates’ book Enzo Ferrari – The Man and the Machine.
“Being able to have these wonderfully talented artists, actors Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz and Shailene Woodley, bring to life these unique characters on location in Modena and the Emilia-Romagna is a vision fulfilled,” says Mann.
“Ferrari is so much more than a story about a man and his machine,” says Adam Fogelson, Chairman of STXfilms Motion Picture. “It is an extraordinary and emotional story that Michael has been developing for years and the entire team at STX is looking forward to the start of production with this dream cast and filmmaker. Adam Driver is one of the most talented and fascinating actors working today, and we could not be more thrilled to pair him with Penélope, whose legendary career builds with every role she takes.”
Cruz, nominated this week for the Best Actress Oscar in Parallel Mothers, won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Vicky Cristina Barcelona and was nominated another two times for her roles in Volver and Nine. In addition to Parallel Mothers for Sony, she currently stars in IFC’s Official Competition opposite Antonio Banderas.
