First there was Lamborghini: The Man Behind the Legend, the 2022 film starring Frank Grillo and written by Oscar-winning screenwriter Robert Moresco (Crash). Then came the higher-octane Ferrari, the 2023 biopic directed by Michael Mann, with Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz and Shailene Woodley. Now, in Rome’s famed Cinecittà studios, another legendary Italian supercar manufacturer is being immortalized in Moresco’s Maserati: The Brothers, with Italian actor Michele Morrone playing one of the three siblings who founded the trident brand in 1914. (Anthony Hopkins, Andy Garcia and Jessica Alba also star.)
The producer behind all three films, 37-year-old Italian Canadian Andrea Iervolino, is bringing these automotive origin stories to the screen at a time when Hollywood is going motor mad. Witness the forthcoming F1 starring Brad Pitt, or the recently announced Austin Butler and Tom Holland movie American Speed, or the fresh rumors that Tom Cruise plans to reboot his 1990 NASCAR movie Days of Thunder.
The founders of the Italian supercars have particular cinematic appeal, Iervolino argues. “If you go to the life story of these people, it looks like it’s already a movie because they went through so much challenge,” he says. “They were pioneers of a new market for sports cars, a new belief, a new way to think, and they started to produce these cars when nobody believed in their logic.” He equates it to another Italian legend: “It’s like Rocky,” he says. “The life of all of these guys is like Rocky.”
2023’s Ferrari, directed by Michael Mann and produced by Iervolino.
Eros Hoagland/NEON
Iervolino has, despite his young age, been in the film business for over 20 years. He began producing when he was just 15, he says, raising money door-to-door from shopkeepers in his hometown of Cassino, Italy, for shoestring productions. In 2004, at just 18, he was a co-executive producer on The Merchant of Venice, starring Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons. He’s since been involved in the production and distribution of more than 75 movies. He’s made animated films for streaming. He’s made movies with the Vatican. He even made a series of movies that screened on a social media platform that rewarded viewers and creators with crypto.
A passionate car collector and amateur racer, Iervolino realized that many people didn’t know the fascinating backstories of Italy’s most iconic car brands. “People in the world are aware that behind the company called Apple, there was a guy called Steve Jobs,” he says. “But they didn’t know that behind a Lamborghini, there’s a guy called Ferruccio Lamborghini.”
Like the tech titans, these automakers helmed the startups of their day, and all hailed from a specific region. “In the same way that in California you have the Silicon Valley, in Italy, we call the area between Modena and Bologna the Motor Valley,” Iervolino says. “Lamborghini, Ferrari and Maserati all come from that area.”
These companies are famously protective of their corporate archives and intellectual property. But though he wasn’t born or raised in the Motor Valley, Iervolino had something going for him when he attempted to gain access to personal histories and material. “I am Italian, and Italy is not a huge country; it’s a small country, only 60 million,” he says. “So it was always easy to reach a family member, to reach people that I could speak to personally and get involved with.”
He’s already thinking of a fourth automotive film, one based on the founding of the French-German-Italian pinnacle brand, Bugatti. “I have ideas,” he says, “but I prefer not to say yet because I haven’t reached out to the actors yet.”
Driver Baconin Borzacchini (left) with Alfiero and Ernesto in the 1930s.
WikiMedia Commons
Iervolino believes the current glut of car movies reflects an interest in, or perhaps preemptive nostalgia for, the roaring energy that gas-guzzling vehicles provide. “The electric cars are super-fast. But they don’t have that noise, that emotion.”
He considers the profundity of this change. “I don’t know if we will have in the future exciting cars, adrenaline-inducing cars like we have now.”
He doesn’t rule out the possibility, though. In fact, he might just be the one to do it. “Because of these movies, I learned how to build a sports car,” he says. “And maybe one day we’ll produce one.”
Alfiero and Ernesto Maserati in an Isotta Fraschini in 1921
WikiMedia Commons
This story appeared in the Jan. 9 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.