Ford vs Ferrari: The Movie

By Wallace Wyss

After several failed attempts, it looks like the story of how Ford beat Ferrari at Le Mans is finally being prepared for the big screen. Shooting on the new 20th Century Fox venture has begun filming already; release date is a year away.

Alas, this is not the whole Shelby life story. And too bad; having written two bios of Shelby, I think his rise from dirt poor chicken farmer to automaker makes good copy.

No, this narrows in on that four-year period after Henry Ford II got the door slammed in his face by Enzo Ferrari on a buyout offer. That’s when he summoned his minions and told them that Ford would ‘build their own damn endurance racer’.

Shelby, at the time, already worked for Ford, who supported his Shelby American company by ordering Cobras. Shelby came into the picture only after Ford tried to do an endurance racer without him in 1964 and fell flat on their collective faces. He “saved” the Ford GT effort by re-engineering the car and making it a winner. In 1966, Ford GT40s took 1st-2nd-3rd at Le Mans.

The working title is Ford vs. Ferrari, which is not the title of the A.J. Baime book that 20th Century Fox bought. (There is in fact a book called Ford vs. Ferrari by the late Anthony Pritchard.) Lucas Foster and Alex Young share producer credits. Kevin Halloran is the executive producer.

The director is heavy-hitter James Mangold famous for Logan, 3:10 to Yuma, and Walk the Line. Screenwriters named are the brother team of Jez and John-Henry Butterworth (who have a sideline of being pig farmers in Somerset). They have the advantage of being based in the UK where presumably they can interview racers and GT40 builders who were there in the ‘60s. They are known for Edge of Tomorrow together, and Jez did the screenplay for the James Bond movie Spectre.

So far it’s reported that Matt Damon is signed to play Carroll Shelby while Christian Bale fills the role of engineer/race driver Ken Miles.

It sounds from the preliminary publicity that they might be exaggerating the role of Ken Miles who was Shelby’s development driver (he was in fact killed testing the Ford GT J-car) but they want to portray Miles as working closely with Shelby in developing strategy when my research shows he drove what he was ordered to drive and made recommendations on how to fix what didn’t work.

Shelby fans look forward to seeing how well Bale will capture the cheeky irreverence of Miles, especially when contrasted with Shelby’s exaggerated drawl (always sounding like he just fell off the turnip truck…).

Unlike most racing movies this one will feature the business end more than usual with a Lee Iacocca character, possibly to be played by Jon Bernthal of The Punisher series on Netflix (and previously a star in The Walking Dead ). A female role that’s been cast is Caitriona Balfe from Outlander as Ken Miles’ wife. There’s no mention so of who will play Shelby’s wives, of which there were many, one of which was a glamorous movie star, Jan Harrison, who ironically dumped him just before he hit paydirt with the Cobra. They married in Tijuana, Mexico, and John Edgar drove them in his Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud while they have champagne and caviar served en route.

Previous efforts

Putting ol’ Shel on the big screen has been tried before. Reportedly Tom Cruise was working on a film about Shelby back in 2013 and of course he’d play the lead. There was a foot height difference, but who can say “no” to Tom Cruise?

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the TV effort announced back in 2011 with the British production company Fremantlemedia and an American company, who together optioned (meaning they bought option to buy the rights to the book for a limited period of time) a book (immodestly, my book SHELBY The Man, the Cars, the Legend) but at the same time they were developing a Philip Dick sci-fi book into a series built around the idea of the Germans winning WWII. They went with The Man in the High Castle, and that became a successful series.

And the original book Fox started with Go Like Hell by A.J. Baime, was resold by Fox to a TV production firm run by Peter Dinklage and Channing Tatum who are simultaneously doing a TV series on the Ford vs. Ferrari battle. Fox will be basing their feature on different material.

Christian Bale has been circling around a car racing film for some time. Ironically, he previously signed with Michael Mann to play the lead role in Brock Yates’ Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races. That film also didn’t get made.

Filming begins

One item of proof that the Fox venture is going to happen is that the State of California announced that the producers of Ford Vs. Ferrari will be getting a grant of several million dollars providing they shoot a major portion in four counties in California and even some in New Orleans. A second crew will shoot in France.

One thing’s for sure, Carroll Shelby’s story will be told. This isn’t the whole story by any means but the part that, besides the Cobra, is remembered by most…

CASTING CALL (but alas, only if you live near Savannah) If you are interested in appearing in the movei, click below for the story and where to send your pictures.

http://www.savannahnow.com/news/20180802/casting-call-matt-damon-christian-bale-need-your-help-on-their-movie-filming-in-savannah

A personal addendum

AN OPEN LETTER TO LUCAS FOSTER:
Hello Mr. Foster. May I add three titles to your source materials bibliography? Shelby’s Wildlife; the Cobras and the Mustangs, SHELBY The Man, The Cars, The Legend, and Ford GT40 and the New Ford GT. I’d be only too happy to be of service to this project. You can reach me at Photojournalistpro2@gmail.com

All the best,
Wallace Wyss

Sources

California Film Tax Credits To ‘Ford Vs. Ferrari’, ‘Coming 2 America …
https://deadline.com/…/california-tax-credits-ford-vs-ferrari-coming-2-america-scarfac…

Ford v. Ferrari (2019) – News – IMDb
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1950186/news

James Mangold Directing Ford vs. Ferrari Film – Variety
https://variety.com/2018/…/james-mangold-next-film-ford-ferrari-logan-1202687686/