Although it would prove one of the big hits of 2019, the commercially successful Ford v Ferrari didn’t exactly race to the starting line. The celluloid version of how Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles created a legendary race car had been stalled for almost a decade.

Since 2009, a number of stars and directors – including Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Michael Mann – had come and gone from the project. Back then it was called Go Like Hell (from the book by AJ Baime on which it was based: Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans).

But it wasn’t until James Mangold got involved in 2018 that things finally began to move forward. The writer/director had just had a critical and commercial hit with Logan, his reimagining of Wolverine as a western. He then helped out significantly on post-production for The Greatest Showman. By year’s end the two films were on their way to earning over a billion dollars for 20th Century Fox, giving Mangold – and Ford v Ferrari, as it was now called — some momentum.