A movie about the 1976 world championship battle between Niki Lauda and James Hunt appears to have taken one step closer to production with news that Ron Howard has come onboard as the director.
Los Angeles-based websites are reporting that Cross Creek Pictures, of Oscar-winning Black Swan fame, will partly fund the film which has been titled Rush. Howard, who directed real-life dramas Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind and Frost/Nixon, is said to be working alongside acclaimed script writer Peter Morgan with the development project currently being touted to studios. The recent success of Senna proves there is an appetite for well-produced F1 films and Steven Spielberg is currently planning a biopic about Hunt with backing from major studio Dreamworks.
Rush would have plenty of material to draw upon, with Lauda's heroic comeback from a near fatal crash at the Nurburgring and the dramatic season finale in torrential rain at Fuji. Hunt and Lauda would also provide charismatic central characters while the battle between their respective teams, McLaren and Ferrari, still rages today.
However, there have always been reservations about F1-based films due to the inherent costs involved in recreating races and the need to satisfy audiences in the USA where the sport is not as popular.
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