Christian Bale to play aged Ferrari founder in new Michael Mann movie

Christian Bale is to star as the founder of Ferrari in a film directed by Michael Mann.

Bale will play Ezno Ferrari, an Italian entrepreneur and “hot-tempered megalomaniac” who went on to create the famous brand, according to Deadline.

The role will see Bale, 41, have to age 15 years for the film, which is set in 1957 when Ferrari was in his late Fifties, a year when “passion, failure, success and death all collided”.

The actor and director last worked together on 2009’s Public Enemies, where Bale played FBI agent Melvin Purvis on the trail of notorious bank robber John Dillinger, played by Johnny Depp.

Mann has been developing a film about the Ferrari founder for 15 years. He previously worked on Go Like Hell, which focused on Ferrari’s rivalry with Henry Ford II, but the film appears to no longer be in the pipeline.

The latest Ferrari project will be based on Brock Yates’ 1991 book Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races, which describes the entrepreneur as a man “given to loud belching and countless amorous conquests”.