In the 20th century, Enzo Ferrari changed the game by inventing a sexy, world-class vehicle that's still at the heap today. In the 21st, Ferrari director Michael Mann is attempting to do the same by bringing back a technology that should never have fallen out of fashion in the first place: the humble custom website.
For the low price of $65 (an unfortunately modern wrinkle in this story), you can gain access to Michael Mann's Ferrari Expanded, a website containing over 200 videos and 3,400 documents pertaining to the making of the 2023 film. "The idea was to take people behind the adventure of what directors do when you build a film like Ferrari,” Mann said while promoting the site at the Red Sea International Film Festival, per Variety. “There has never been a website quite like this because we knew that we were doing [the website] when we were shooting the movie."
The idea for the site apparently came to the director after one of his daughters told him he should preserve the material created throughout the process of making the film, so if this concept takes off into a new golden age for DVD bonus features (hopefully with a slightly lower barrier to entry than this particular example), we have her to thank. The site reportedly contains two separate sections dedicated to shooting the film's central car race, "expansive character notes" written by Mann, interviews with the crew and cast members like Adam Driver, Shailene Woodley, and Penélope Cruz, and more.
Mann isn't the only director to take the film world's sad lack of bonus content into his own hands. This past summer, The Haunting Of Hill House creator Mike Flanagan started a podcast called Directors Commentary, intended to recreate the "sweet nostalgia of visiting a movie rental store" and discovering that your favorite film has a little sticker reading "includes special features." You can listen to his latest episode, featuring Pig director Mickael Sarnoski, here.
