09/08/2011
NEWS STORY
 |
After years of being bereft of movies about F1, Hollywood now seems to be embracing the sport, with the latest reports suggesting that plans are underway for a £100m ($150m) blockbuster production about it. However, readers shouldn't hold their breath just yet though since F1's boss Bernie Ecclestone has still got to give the green light to the project and, as he told Pitpass' business editor Christian Sylt, he already knows what he wants from an F1 movie.
The renewed interest in F1 movies has been driven by the success of 'Senna' the biopic about the late Ayrton Senna. It has already led to the production of 'Rush' a movie being directed by Ron Howard about the famous rivalry between Niki Lauda and James Hunt.
Both of these films of course focus on specific drivers with the previous production about F1 in general being John Frankenheimer's epic 'Grand Prix'. In the late 1990s Sylvester Stallone spent months planning a movie about F1 but it all came to nought with some suggesting that the sport's politicking was to blame for its demise. The silver lining to the cloud was that Stallone instead shifted his attention to IndyCar and in 2001 released 'Driven', which was widely panned by critics. F1 may have been spared similar treatment and it gives Hollywood a clean slate to start with.
According to reports emanating out of Hollywood and New York, Warner Brothers has recently hired Ben Younger, the writer and director of the financial drama 'Boiler Room' to write a screenplay for an F1 film. Younger is a big fan of two-wheeled racing and has been riding motorcycles for 19 years. This year he started racing in the Championship Cup series and he first met Warner Brothers to discuss the F1 project when he was in California to ride at Laguna Seca.
Younger was encouraged to meet Warner Brothers by his agent Creative Artists - coincidentally, the firm which is advising the Formula One Teams Association about its commercial negotiations with Ecclestone. Younger had just finished writing a script about the Isle of Man TT but Jon Berg, one of Warner Brothers' executive producers, convinced him to work on its F1 project which was also due to focus on Senna.
Younger is reworking the story as an adventure set in the modern era and it is his first major studio writing assignment. "I'm used to writing movies where I have to scale back," he says adding "but this is a $150 million movie. This is not the time to skimp on set pieces." He describes Warner Brothers as being "serious about it," and adds that "they want to do 'Grand Prix'... They want a technical project, and they want an American driver."
Younger is well aware of motorsport's Hollywood history and he says "I don't want to do 'Driven'" He started off on the right track by visiting last month's Hungarian Grand Prix and he says that the movie must be official. "It has to be Ferrari and McLaren," he says. There's just one tiny problem: Ecclestone has not yet approved the project.
Ecclestone has ultimate control over whether F1 appears in movies and he has been fiercely protective of it. Quite rightly too given how bad some sports movies have been. Indeed, Ecclestone even put the brakes on F1 cars appearing in a brief scene, set in Monaco, in last year's Marvel Comics movie Iron Man 2. Instead, the production team turned to the Automobile Club de Monaco and used Historic Grand Prix cars. It explains why movie rights comprise none of the $1.6bn which F1 makes in annual revenue according to the sport's trade guide Formula Money.
Ecclestone told Sylt he is adamant that Stallone's movie could have gone ahead if the actor had agreed to the terms required to make an F1 film. They might make most production studios weep. "We could have done a 50-50 deal and it would have worked," says Ecclestone. He adds that "the plan was that we were going to be partners 50-50, the bank guarantee it and we get whatever sponsors or people we can." It seems that Stallone was ultimately unhappy with this arrangement as Ecclestone says that he "wanted $20m for himself, to act, $20m to be a director, $20m to be the make-up artist. He was a fan of F1 at the time but there was no way we could do a deal."
Ecclestone adds that "those film people aren't used to operating like that, it's all other people's money. They don't want to take any risks. Sly didn't want to put anything in. That's how he is used to operating. There is nothing wrong with what he was doing."
He adds that despite Driven's failings, Stallone's F1 film would have been a success. "The film he made was a joke but we could have done a good film... Sly's name and image was what was important - his brand. It would have been good." We will never know whether this would have been the case and time will tell whether F1 really will get a second chance in Hollywood.
Editor's Note: In 1977, Bernie Ecclestone was involved in the movie Bobby Deerfield, the story of an American F1 driver - played by Al Pacino - who falls in love with the enigmatic, and terminally ill Lillian Morelli, played by Marthe Keller.
Ecclestone is specifically acknowledged at the end of the movie for his "technical assistance" and "special participation". Pacino, who couldn't drive a road car at that time, races for Ecclestone's Brabham team in the movie… which is actually a lot worse than it sounds and is regularly 'omitted' from reflections on the legendary actor's career. As well it might.
The movie was dedicated to Carlos Pace and Tom Pryce, both of whom were killed during the period in which the movie was being made. Pryce was killed in a horrendous accident in the 1977 South African Grand Prix while Pace died in an air crash just days later. Scenes in the movie of Pacino 'driving' the Brabham BT-45 are actually of Pace driving the car in South Africa in 1976.