Robert De Niro is to play Enzo Ferrari in a biopic of the famous sports car impresario’s life, reports Italian newspaper Il Messaggero.

Ferrari, who died in 1988 at the age of 90, founded the Scuderia Ferrari racing team and the car company that bears his name. De Niro, 71, told the newspaper: “It is an honour to tell the life of an extraordinary man who revolutionised the world of motor sport. The film will go into production soon, mostly in Italy, and has absolute priority over all my other projects.”

The biopic, which is being produced by Triworld’s Gianni Bozzacchi and De Niro’s production company TriBeCa Film, is expected to cover a period from 1945 to the 1980s. Clint Eastwood has reportedly shown interest in directing if he likes the script, which Nixon screenwriters Stephen J Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson are tipped to deliver.

Bozzacchi said the “epic” film would be titled simply Ferrari and would have a big budget. De Niro was previously attached to play the marque founder in an early 1990s production from Michael Mann that never made it to cinemas.

It was not immediately 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.