The first teaser trailer for “Maserati: The Brothers” dropped this week, and the footage looks like nothing Hollywood has attempted in years. Prewar open-wheel cars hammering down narrow Italian roads, bodywork inches apart, dust and death in every frame.
Al Pacino and Anthony Hopkins anchor the cast. Andy Garcia rounds out the marquee names. Behind the camera sits Robert Moresco, who took home the Oscar for best original screenplay in 2005. That is a stacked deck for a film about three brothers most casual moviegoers have never heard of.
The story centers on Alfieri, Bindo, and Carlo Maserati, and builds toward the marque’s consecutive Indianapolis 500 victories in 1939 and 1940. Wilbur Shaw drove the Boyle Special, a Maserati 8CTF, to both wins. It remains the only time an Italian manufacturer has taken the top step at Indy, a fact that has quietly gathered dust for 86 years.
Production was based largely in and around Modena, with additional shooting in Rome. The Andrea Iervolino Company produced the film, the same outfit behind Michael Mann’s “Ferrari” and the less warmly received “Lamborghini: The Man Behind the Legend.”
That split track record is the tension hovering over this project. “Ferrari” worked because Mann is Mann, and because Adam Driver disappeared into the role of Enzo with surgical precision. The Lamborghini film arrived with less firepower and landed with a thud. Same production company, wildly different outcomes.
Maserati’s story, on paper, has dramatic ingredients the Lamborghini origin lacked. Three brothers building something from nothing in early twentieth-century Italy, the lethal reality of prewar motorsport, and a climax set at the most famous race in America. The period setting also sidesteps the problem that plagues modern Maserati, which is that its current lineup struggles to justify the trident badge. In 1939, Maserati needed no justification. The cars spoke at 170 mph.
Casting Pacino and Hopkins together is the kind of move that either elevates a film or overwhelms it. Both men are deep into their careers, and both bring decades of audience trust. Whether Moresco can harness that wattage into something that serves the story rather than overshadowing it will determine whether this lands closer to “Ferrari” or closer to “Lamborghini.”
The Italian automotive biopic is quietly becoming its own subgenre. A Bugatti film is already in development, tracing the life of Ettore Bugatti from his Milanese roots to his French empire. If these keep making money, it is only a matter of time before someone greenlights the Lancia Stratos rally saga or the story of Tazio Nuvolari humiliating the Silver Arrows at the 1935 German Grand Prix in his underpowered Alfa Romeo.
The trailer suggests the racing sequences will deliver. Practical cars, real locations, period-correct machines wheel to wheel on roads that were never designed for speed. That raw visual texture is hard to fake digitally, and the production seems to know it.
No release date has been confirmed, but the trailer’s arrival signals the marketing campaign is underway. The pieces are expensive and well-chosen. Whether they fit together at speed is the only question left.
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