The Office is one of the best comedies in television history, but did you know that Steve Carell almost didn’t play the iconic role of Michael Scott?
10.01.2024 - 20:19 / deadline.com
Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the year’s most talked-about scripts continues with Michael Mann’s high-octane sports feature Ferrari, which was two decades in the making.
Speaking at Deadline’s Contenders London event last fall, the director admitted there were times he thought his passion project about the life of Enzo Ferrari would never take off. The script by Troy Kennedy Martin — based on Brock Yates’ book — kept him energized.
“There were numerous times when I thought this was an impossible film to make,” said Mann. “And then I would go back and reread the screenplay and what was magical and riveting about it would present itself all over again and I stayed completely committed to it.”
Martin, whose script credits included the original Michael Caine-starring The Italian Job among several BBC TV series including Z Cars and 1985’s political drama Edge of Darkness, died in 2009.
Ferrari, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in August, is set in 1957, when the marriage of Enzo (Adam Driver) and Laura (Penélope Cruz) has begun to fracture as a result of his philandering and the tragic recent death of their young son. Their unsettled domestic world is on a collision course with his work life as Enzo faces a pair of major turning points: financial pressure to increase productivity, which means going against his long-standing desire to only produce race cars, and preparation for the treacherous cross-country open-road Mille Miglia race.
On Wednesday, Cruz netted a SAG Awards nomination for Supporting Actress and last week the film scored five BAFTA longlist nods, including for cinematography.
Neon is handling the U.S. release. Mann is also producing via his Moto Pictures banner alongside P.J.
The Office is one of the best comedies in television history, but did you know that Steve Carell almost didn’t play the iconic role of Michael Scott?
Anna Tingley If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. After premiering at Venice Film Festival in August and hitting theaters in December, Michael Mann‘s “Ferrari” will become available on digital starting Jan. 23, and on Blu-ray/DVD on March 12.
Emily Longeretta SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from the first four episodes of “The Traitors,” now streaming on Peacock. Ever since both the BBC and Peacock adapted the Dutch series “De Verraders” into “The Traitors,” it’s been a hit. Both produced by Studio Lambert, the U.K. version premiered on the BBC in November 2022, with the U.S.
He's spent much of the last few weeks on social media taking aim at female football commentators and pundits. But former Manchester City midfielder Joey Barton has also been involved in plenty of other controversies over the years.
Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer At the Cannes Film Festival in 2018, Kristen Stewart announced that her feature directorial debut would be an adaptation of “The Chronology of Water,” the 2011 memoir by author Lidia Yuknavitch. Since then, Stewart has been pounding the pavement to drum up financing for the project.
Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the year’s most talked-about scripts continues with Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Poor Things, the darkly comedic genre-bender penned by Tony McNamara that marks a reunion of the Greek filmmaker with McNamara and star Emma Stone after 2018’s Oscar-nominated The Favourite.
Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the year’s most talked-about scripts continues with The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer‘s historical drama that was inspired loosely by Martin Amis’ 2014 novel of the same name set outside the walls of Auschwitz during the Holocaust.
A campaign has been launched to tell motorists that Ardwick is ‘not the car park of the city’.
Stuart Miller Four years ago, Gabriel Leone appeared in a small Brazilian movie called “Piedade” playing a character named Marlon Brando; he was not playing the American actor but does bear a resemblance to a young Brando. So it is only fitting that when the Rio de Janeiro native made his English-language debut, in Michael Mann’s “Ferrari,” he’s playing race car driver Alfonso de Portago, a stylish sportsman who both looked like and styled himself after “The Wild One.” “On the first or second page of the script, it refers to him as being like Brando,” says Leone, who had little time to prepare, flying to Italy a month after landing this huge career break.
Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the year’s most talked-about scripts continues with The Iron Claw, which tells the saga of the wrestling Von Erich family in two hours.
Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the year’s most talked-about scripts continues with Napoleon, David Scarpa‘s screenplay that fuels Ridley Scott‘s historical epic starring Joaquin Phoenix.
With the long-gestating biopic “Ferrari” in the rearview mirror, what’s next for director Michael Mann? Mann has teased a couple of projects in development (like this sci-fi one), but it will most likely be “Heat 2,” an adaptation of the sequel novel to his 1995 film the director published in 2022. In a recent sit-down with Variety, Mann covered where the story of “Heat 2” picks up after the events of “Heat,” when he hopes to start shooting the film, and whether or not he’ll cast someone as talented as Val Kilmer to play Chris Shiherlis.
Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Legendary filmmaker Michael Mann is “worried about the future” of movies. But, he also declares, “Cinema is not dying.” A luminary auteur with a distinctive visual style and gripping storytelling, Mann calls this time following the end of the historic Hollywood strikes “a real watershed moment.” “The companies are split in ways they haven’t been before between streamers and legacy studios,” he tells Variety‘s Awards Circuit Podcast. “Those interests don’t sometimes align.
There's one viral video of Michael Olise where he gives a blunt and brief interview after scoring a last-gasp winner against West Ham.
Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the year’s most talked-about scripts continues with writer-director Cord Jefferson‘s feature film debut American Fiction.
Adam Driver is fired up about criticisms of his recent role choices. On an episode of the “SmartLess” podcast, the actor defended playing famous Italian figures in both of his last two movies, “House of Gucci” and “Ferrari.” “So many people have been like, ‘How many Italians… ?’.
Adam Driver has had enough of journalists asking him why he’s played two Italian roles in quick succession on the press tour for Ferrari.The actor made an appearance on the SmartLess podcast with Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes on Monday (January 1), where the subject of him playing two Italian men in two recent movies came up. Driver played Maurizio Gucci in 2021’s House Of Gucci and Enzo Ferrari in Michael Mann’s biopic Ferrari.Speaking about how he hasn’t been very strategic in his acting career so far, Driver joked that the decision to play the two roles in quick succession was a “good example of not being strategic in a way that I probably should”.“So many people have been like, ‘How many Italians…?’ I’m like, it’s just kind of worked out that way,” Driver said, noting that someone on his PR team should have warned him it would “come up a lot” on the Ferrari press tour.“But I’m like, you know, it’s Ridley [Scott] and it’s Michael [Mann] and they’re in my mind some of the best filmmakers,” he said.
Adam Driver is opening up about his career and how he has not been strategic in booking his role and instead going by instinct to work with great filmmakers.
Adam Driver is tired of defending his recent roles.
Ferrari, released in cinemas on Boxing Day (December 26) – Laura and Enzo (Adam Driver) are arguing when she pulls out a pistol and fires it intentionally into the wall next to her husband’s head. It sets the tone for their dysfunctional relationship throughout the movie, which involves business disagreements and marital infidelity on the half of Enzo.“I had a lot of resistance to that scene and I actually tried to convince Michael [Mann] to do a version without the gun,” Cruz told NME in an exclusive interview with Driver and co-star Shailene Woodley.