Ferrari Release Date, Cast, Plot, Trailer, Director And More Details

2023 is turning out to be a surprisingly memorable and diverse movie year. In addition to massive box office successes like "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse," "Barbie," and "Oppenheimer," there have been smaller, equally acclaimed critical darlings like "Asteroid City," "Past Lives," and "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret." While there are only a few months left in the year, too, there are still several major forthcoming movies that will blow everyone away in 2023.

One of the year's biggest remaining titles is "Ferrari." The newest film from "Heat" and "Collateral" filmmaker Michael Mann is shaping up to be both a propulsive racing thriller and an intimate character drama. A long-gestating passion project for Mann, the movie's status as his first feature effort since 2015's "Blackhat" was enough to make it one of the year's most noteworthy non-franchise titles back when it was originally announced. Now, coming off the recent acclaim it received at the Venice International Film Festival in late August, "Ferrari" seems primed to be one of 2023's last great movies.

Taking all of this into account, here's everything that viewers should know about "Ferrari," including when it's set to hit theaters, what it's about, who stars in it, and more.

While very little has been officially released from "Ferrari," its distributor, Neon, has already set a theatrical release date for it. As of this writing, the highly anticipated racing biopic is slated to hit theaters in the United States on December 25, 2023, which means it'll be coming out just a little less than nine full years after Michael Mann's previous film, "Blackhat," was released on January 16, 2015.

"Ferrari" is set to debut around the same time as a number of other dramas, including "The Iron Claw," "All of Us Strangers," and "The Color Purple." It'll also be released just a few days after "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom," so it seems safe to say that it's going to have to face some intense competition near the end of the year. Whether or not it'll be able to stand out from 2023's other late-December releases remains to be seen, though its early acclaim and Mann's reputation among cinephiles may be enough to give it the boost it needs.

As its title suggests, "Ferrari" focuses on the real life of Italian racing driver and businessman, Enzo Ferrari. The film is not a complete, straightforward biopic that explores its subject's life from beginning to end, though. Instead, the racing drama takes place during the summer of 1957 and follows its lead as he tries to save his racing empire from falling apart and going broke by fighting to ensure that his cars and his drivers do well in the Mille Miglia, a dangerous, 1,000-mile-long race that stretches across Italy.

As is the case with all of Michael Mann's films, "Ferrari" will focus on both the personal and professional sides of its titular figure's life. Indeed, two of its key characters will be Enzo's wife, Laura, as well as his longtime mistress, Lina Lardi, and the film promises to explore the impact that his relationships with both women had on his life. "Ferrari" should, in other words, offer viewers a fairly nuanced exploration of its iconic lead, while also taking place within a very specific, limited period of time.

Adam Driver is set to add yet another impressive screen credit to his already distinguished list of movie and TV roles with his forthcoming turn as Enzo Ferrari in "Ferrari." The American actor will star in the film as its eponymous lead — making it his first collaboration with writer-director Michael Mann. While the movie's wide release is still several months away, too, Driver has already received widespread acclaim for his performance as Enzo from many of the critics who attended the "Ferrari" premiere at the Venice International Film Festival in late August.

Oscar winner Penélope Cruz, meanwhile, also stars in the film as Laura, the wife of Driver's Enzo and mother of their only son, Alfredo, who famously passed away when he was just 24. Like her co-star, Cruz has already received considerable early acclaim for her performance in "Ferrari." She and Driver are joined in the film by Shailene Woodley, who plays Lina Lardi, Enzo's longtime mistress.

Additionally, Gabriel Leone stars in "Ferrari" as Alfonso de Portago, while Sarah Gadon plays Mexican film actor Linda Christian. For their parts, Jack O'Connell and Patrick Dempsey play real-life competitive racers Peter Collins and Piero Taruffi, respectively. The drama's other stars include Michele Savoia, Erik Haugen, Ben Collins, Andrea Dolente, Tommaso Basili, and Giuseppe Bonifati.

"Ferrari" was directed by none other than Michael Mann, whose previous directorial efforts include the Oscar-nominated 1999 drama, "The Insider," as well as beloved thrillers like "Heat," "Thief," "The Last of the Mohicans," "Manhunter," "Collateral," and "Miami Vice." His latest film is his first in eight years, and according to Deadline, Mann has been developing "Ferrari" for over two decades. Throughout that time, he came close to making "Ferrari" with a few different leading men. At certain points, not only was Christian Bale attached to play the film's titular role of Enzo Ferrari, but so was Hugh Jackman.

Eventually, Mann teamed up with Adam Driver and the rest is, well, history. While the film's focus on a driven, frequently distant man makes it, in many ways, a natural addition to Mann's filmography, the director has described it in a way that may be surprising to some of his fans. Specifically, in an interview with Variety, Mann discussed how the film leans into the heightened emotions of its story, teasing, "Everything [Enzo's] been collides with what he might become, and the company has gone bust. His wife finds out about the other woman. It's a spectacularly operatic melodrama in real life."

With all this in mind, "Ferrari" seems designed to take its filmmaker and his many longtime supporters to places both new and familiar.

"Ferrari" was co-written by Michael Mann and the late screenwriter Troy Kennedy Martin, whose previous credits include movies like 1969's "The Italian Job" and "Kelly's Heroes." Notably, Mann has earned a screenwriting credit on nearly every one of his movies, including "Public Enemies," "The Insider," and "Ali," all of which are true-story dramas like "Ferrari." It shouldn't come as much of a surprise then to learn that Mann is credited on the script for his newest film.

That said, in his interview with Variety earlier this year, the director purposefully acknowledged how much of a mark Martin's initial drafts of the "Ferrari" script left on the finished film. "Troy and the screenplay, I changed it around quite a bit. But the absolute foundation and the beating heart of this movie is what Troy did," the filmmaker revealed. Unfortunately, Mann's fans will have to wait until December 25 to discover exactly what kind of screenplay emerged from his and Martin's collaboration. 

Mann also partly produced the forthcoming film, which is set to be distributed by Neon.

To date, Neon has released just one brief trailer for "Ferrari." 

The teaser in question features several quick, intense shots of some of the film's adrenaline-pumping racing sequences and offers numerous glimpses into the scenes that Adam Driver's Enzo Ferrari shares throughout it with his wife, Laura, and his mistress, Lina Lardi. The trailer even gives viewers a small preview of how the death of their son sours Enzo and Laura's relationship, as well as a taste of the overwhelming grief that both characters will likely be grappling with throughout the course of "Ferrari."

The teaser's quick on-the-road action shots and moments of interpersonal melodrama all come to a head in its final seconds, which give Enzo the chance to emphatically tell a potential driver, "If you get into one of my cars, you get in to win." It's a fitting final line for a trailer that seems designed solely to communicate the emotional and dramatic intensity that viewers will experience when they check out "Ferrari" in theaters later this year.

"Ferrari" has not yet been officially rated, so it's hard to say with any real certainty what the film's rating will be. That said, it is worth noting that all of Michael Mann's previous films have been R-rated adult dramas. In his August interview with Variety, a car accident scene in "Ferrari" is also described by the piece's author, Stephen Rodrick, as "one of the most violent and emotionally crushing I've ever seen." Roderick adds in the piece, "Mann is unsparing — there are severed body parts and decapitated torsos."

Taking all of this into consideration, it seems fair to assume that "Ferrari" will likely fall into the slightly more mature, R-rated drama space that Mann has spent his entire career operating in. The car crash scene described above, frankly, sounds violent enough to guarantee that "Ferrari" will receive a higher rating than PG-13. In all likelihood, though, viewers probably won't get any updates about the film's rating until sometime closer to its December 25 release date.

"Ferrari" is, indeed, based on a true story. 

The film's script was inspired by Brock Yates' 1991 biography, "Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine," and it promises to focus on the very real moment in its central Italian entrepreneur's life when it seemed like everything that he held dear, including his auto empire, his marriage, and his relationship with his mistress, were all on the brink of falling apart. "Ferrari" will, consequently, explore how several real-life events — like the death of his son — challenged and impacted Adam Driver's Enzo. It will also bring certain historical moments to life on the big screen, including the tragic 1957 car crash that resulted in the deaths of Alfonso de Portago and 10 spectators.

If viewers want to know more about what they can expect to see in "Ferrari," they can either do some of their own research into its subjects' lives or pick up a copy of Yates' original biography. Moviegoers who don't do either of those things, meanwhile, should still be able to go into "Ferrari" and find themselves wrapped up in its story. After all, Michael Mann does have a history of making movies that are both emotionally dense and thrillingly entertaining, and there's no reason to suspect that "Ferrari" will be any different.