Fall Movie Preview: Hollywood Goes All-In On Original Films

When 20th Century Fox greenlit James Mangold’s “Ford v. Ferrari” — an original movie with a nearly $100 million budget — the director’s agent had some advice.

- 

“Enjoy this,” Mangold recalled him saying. “This will be the last one of these you ever make.”

“Ford v Ferrari,” which viscerally recounts the efforts of an automotive designer (Matt Damon) and a race car driver (Christian Bale) to build a Ford that could beat Ferrari at the Le Mans 24-hour race in 1966, has a lot going for it: big-name movie stars, a director coming off an Oscar-nominated hit (“Logan”) and a marathon, nearly hour-long racing finale.

But it doesn’t have what typically scores such a large budget in today’s Hollywood: franchise making IP (intellectual property). It might as well be a unicorn.

“With the number of mergers and streaming operations coming up to speed, I think there’s a real question whether the theatrical film is really just the tentpole. Independent films are struggling. Even mainline dramas are struggling to find an audience,” said Mangold, who has been a regular filmmaker at Fox, which Disney acquired earlier this year.

“In that sense, we’re a throwback film,” he continues. “We’re a modern movie in all the senses of modern storytelling, modern technology, modern sensibility. But we’re trying to do something that I really miss seeing in the movies, which is a movie for grown-ups that’s entertaining and thought-provoking and moving and isn’t selling you the same old thing.”