Page 24 - The Hollywood Reporter (January 2020)

BEST PICTURE
Ford v
Ferrari
Matt Damon and Christian Bale
star in a fast-paced, character-driven
action-drama that in today’s movie
climate feels like ‘the last of its kind’
BY SHANNON O’CONNOR
roducer Jenno
Topping’s definitive
moment while work-
ing on Ford v Ferrari
P came six weeks out
from shooting. Topping, director
James Mangold and the rest of
the team were having a meeting
— toy cars and cardboard cutouts
in hand — to figure out how to
shoot one of the film’s many
races. Then, in a bemused tone,
Mangold announced to the room,
“You know, I am not really much
of a car guy.”
After getting over her initial
shock from this admission,
Topping realized that it was
exactly what made Mangold per-
fect for the project. “He’s enough
of a car guy to really care about
how those scenes were shot and
what cars meant in the movie,
but that’s not what the movie was
about to him,” says Topping. “And
that’s why it works.”
The film, nominated for four
Oscars, including best picture,
tells the true story of how the
Ford Motor Co. defeated the seem-
ingly unbeatable Ferrari team at
the 1966 24 Hours at Le Mans race
in France while also exploring
the complex friendship between
car designer Carroll Shelby
(Matt Damon) and rebel driver
Ken Miles (Christian Bale).
Topping, whose ban-
ner Chernin Entertainment
announced its exit from Fox on
Jan. 17, spoke with THR about
the Fox-Disney merger’s effect
on the film, the “grim” future
for character-driven movies
and the lack of nominations for
female directors.
T H E
You have been with this film for
years. What’s it like to finally see it
land on the awards circuit?
JENNO TOPPING Sometimes proj-
ects take a really long time to
get made and go through a
bunch of obstacles and chal-
lenges. There is a reason
everything came together the
way it did. I just think the timing
was right in other ways, having
to do with what was happening
in the life of the studio. Who
knows why these things come
together when and how they do?
But we definitely had a lot of
wind at our back because of
a constellation of elements that
came together.
H O L L Y W O O D R E P O R T E R 2 0 J A N U A R Y
How did the Fox-Disney merger
affect you as a producer?
I have to give [Fox vice chair-
man and head of production]
Emma Watts a ton of credit. The
merger was happening, but she
set her sights on this movie and
backed it and Jim [Mangold]. We
were above the fray; we made the
movie while all the brouhaha was
going on. To Disney’s credit, the
second they saw the movie, they
embraced it and increased the
momentum. They were amaz-
ing partners. Somehow it was
one of those lucky things that we
just kind of threaded the needle,
especially given that it is a kind of
movie that isn’t made anymore.
2 0 2 0 A W A R D S
VITAL STATS
STUDIO Fox/Disney
RELEASE DATE Nov. 27
WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE
$211.2M (through Jan. 16)
DIRECTOR James Mangold
CAST
Christian Bale, Matt Damon
TOP AWARDS
4 Oscar noms,
1 Globe nom, 3 BAFTA noms,
2 SAG Award noms
What is your takeaway, as a pro-
ducer, about box office numbers
and their effect on a film?
All of us felt like we were making
the last of its kind, in the sense
that it was a big, classy, expen-
sive, gorgeous movie that felt
like a classic in many ways. The
marketplace is so mercurial, and
nobody knows what is going to
work. The only North Star,
so to speak, is finding material
that you love and trying to build
it in a way that you think will
resonate with people. In terms
of the future potential of this
kind of movie, I have no idea.
It looks grim on the horizon. I
wouldn’t know what to make if DAMON: MERRICK MORTON/TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX. BALE: COURTESY OF TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX. TOPPING: KEVIN WINTER/GETTY IMAGES.
I were running a studio today,
because it’s so difficult to take
bets on things when we’re con-
sistently proved wrong. The only
two constants are superhero
movies — people in tights — and
genre movies, and everything in
between is a crapshoot.
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