NEW YORK — 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 hourlong 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 amount 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.