Adam Driver came down hard on big streamers and studios like Netflix and Amazon while doing press for Ferrari alongside director Michael Mann ahead of the film’s premiere on Thursday night at the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy.
Driver plays Italian car maker Enzo Ferrari in the NEON film, which was granted an interim agreement waiver from SAG-AFTRA that allows Driver to promote the film at the Venice Film Festival amid the ongoing actors strike.
NEON, which is handling the film’s U.S. distribution, is not one of the big studios and streaming services that are being struck by SAG-AFTRA and the WGA, and neither is STX International, which is in charge of worldwide distribution.
Here’s What Adam Driver Had to Say About Netflix and Amazon
“Why is it that a smaller distribution company like Neon or STX International can meet the dream demands of what SAG is asking for in this pre-negotiation but a big company like Netflix and Amazon can’t?” Driver said in Venice on Thursday, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“Every time people from SAG go and support a movie that has agreed to these terms — the interim agreement — it just makes it more obvious that these people are willing to support the people that they collaborate with, and the others are not. So when this opportunity came up, it seemed like — understanding the interim agreement — a no-brainer for all of these reasons of why you want to support your union.”
Mann stressed that “individually and collectively we all stand in total solidarity with SAG and the writers guild strike as well.”
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“Ferrari got made because the people who worked on Ferrari made it by forgoing large sectors of salaries, in the case of Adam and myself,” Mann said. “It was not made by a big studio — no big studio wrote us a check. And that’s why we’re here, standing in solidarity.”
The Writers Guild of America has been on strike since May and the Screen Actors Guild joined them on strike in July. So far, they have not been able to reach a satisfactory deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents the interests of the big studios and streaming services that are being struck, including Disney, Netflix, Apple, Paramount, Sony, Amazon and Universal.
The issues on the table for both the writers and the actors strike include getting better wages, residuals, and ensuring safeguards around the use of artificial intelligence in the entertainment industry.
What Is Ferrari About?
Ferrari, which is due to arrive in U.S. theaters at Christmas, also stars Penelope Cruz as Enzo Ferrari’s wife and Shailene Woodley as his lover during a pivotal period in the car maker’s life. Patrick Demsey and Jack O’Connell play Italian race car drivers. The film is based on the book Enzo Ferrari: The Man, The Cars, The Races, The Machine by Brock Yates.
“It is the summer of 1957. Behind the spectacle of Formula 1, ex-racer Enzo Ferrari is in crisis. Bankruptcy threatens the factory he and his wife, Laura, built from nothing ten years earlier. Their volatile marriage has been battered by the loss of their son, Dino, a year earlier. Ferrari struggles to acknowledge his son Piero with Lina Lardi. Meanwhile, his drivers’ passion to win pushes them to the edge as they launch into the treacherous 1,000-mile race across Italy, the Mille Miglia,” reads the official description from NEON.
You can watch the first official teaser trailer for Ferrari, which came out Wednesday, below.
Main Image: Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari in Ferrari. Photo Credit: NEON.
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