FORD V FERRARI director James Mangold isn’t a gear head. He admits to AMC that he knew very little about racing when he got into this project. But he understands how films are made, and he found a ton of similarities as he tinkered away on his latest drama.
"Honestly, I don't go to the set every day going, ‘Suburban gear-head dads… what do they like?’" Mangold told AMC. "I just try to make a movie I like; I'm not race car obsessive. But to me, the key was speaking to myself, teaching myself or making a movie that would make me interested in racing. Because there's so many things I didn't know that I wanted to know (about) what makes it exciting."
But he found out. FORD V FERRARI documents the true-life struggle of the Ford Motor Company, which decided — as a way to boost sluggish sales — to challenge the Ferrari corporation at a track that they had dominated for years: the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France. And Mangold's big-screen treatment of this story is best appreciated in IMAX at AMC.
In the IMAX format, audiences will feel like they're behind the wheel alongside James Mangold's lead actors. Every rev of an engine will envelope you and send vibrations through your seat, creating an immersive moviegoing experience. But you have to act quickly. FORD V FERRARI is only confirmed for one week in IMAX at AMC, and you really don't want to miss the movie in this premium large format.
Matt Damon plays legendary racer (and eventual car designer) Carroll Shelby, who is recruited by Ford to build the right car to defeat Ferrari. He also needs a driver, and for that, he turns to cantankerous Ken Miles (Christian Bale), one of the best on the planet.
Ken has a habit of talking while behind the wheel, both to his car and to the rival drivers.
"Christian made this incredible list of ‘isms.’ You can ask him about it. Just like from the neighborhood and the region in England where Ken Miles was from. He made a list of all sorts of things that he would just say," Mangold told us. "And he had this wonderful crumbled piece of paper that whenever he got in the cab of the car, he would kind of look down this list and go, ‘What haven’t I said?’ Or, ‘What's ready for a reprise?’"
And while the characters in FORD V FERRARI are racing against the clock to design the perfect car, to elevate Ford and defeat Ferrari, Mangold says that he saw a lot of similarities between the automotive industry and the film industry.
"I feel like there's an awful lot of good analogies between life in the movie business and life in the racing business," he said. "The whole struggle portrayed in the movie between corporate interests and making money, and marketing interests and the purity of the love of racing, which in our case would be the purity and love cinema — trying to make great films in this most difficult of all environments where almost no original films get made anymore. You're always in danger of just going direct to streaming and not even coming out in a theatre. When you make an original film, you feel like you have an incredible opportunity and also the burden of you need to succeed if other movies like this are going to get made."
Help FORD V FERRARI succeed. It’s a riveting and entertaining time at the movies that you neex to experience in IMAX at AMC. Get tickets for the opening on November 15.
