Are you torqueing to me?

Robert de Niro has announced that he has signed up to play the leading role in a new film on the life and times of Enzo Ferrari, the l...

Robert de Niro has announced that he has signed up to play the leading role in a new film on the life and times of Enzo Ferrari, the legendary motor racing entrepreneur. Ferrari died in 1988 at the age of 90, having founded the Scuderia Ferrari racing team as well as the iconic car company that bears his name.

The 71-year-old actor from New York is said to be immensely proud to have been cast in the role of one of motorsports’ most famous names.

So are you torqueing to me? De Niro having fun in a scene from Taxi Driver.

The real Enzo Ferrari

“The film will go into production soon, mostly in Italy, and has absolute priority over all my other projects,” said de Niro.

The film is being produced by Gianni Bozzacchi and de Niro's own production company, TriBeCa film. It is rumoured that Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood is interested in directing the movie, if he likes the script, which Nixon screenwriters’ Stephen J Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson are tipped to deliver.

The film is to be very simply titled Ferrari and will cover the years between 1945 up to the end of the Enzo era in 1988. It is not clear whether the biopic will be shot in Ferrari’s native Italian, in English, or in a mixture of the two. De Niro reportedly spent four months learning the Sicilian dialect for the 1974 film The Godfather: Part II and also spoke Italian for the 2011 romantic comedy The Ages of Love.