F1: the big budget Brad Pitt racing drama directed by Joseph Kosinski, gets a new teaser trailer.
One of the riskiest movies of the year is, without a doubt, F1. A giant-budget movie about Formula One racing, it marks Joseph Kosinski’s much-anticipated follow-up to Top Gun: Maverick, and boasts an all-star cast led by Brad Pitt. In it, he plays a former champ who re-enters F1 racing to mentor a younger driver (Damon Idris) at the behest of his old sponsor, played by Javier Bardem. Sporting a budget that’s somewhere in the $300 million range, in order for this movie to turn a profit it probably has to make about $700-800 million worldwide, numbers Brad Pitt has never mustered throughout his career, with World War Z’s $540 million remaining his top-earner.
Produced by Apple, the film certainly has a lot going for it, with Jerry Bruckheimer producing, a score by Hans Zimmer, as well as the fact that it’s getting an IMAX release. Given Formula One’s popularity overseas, the hope is that even if the movie only performs modestly in North America, it’ll be a worldwide smash. The highest-grossing racing movie to date is Ford V Ferrari, which made $225 million worldwide.
The new teaser trailer, which will also air during the Super Bowl, gives us some idea of what the movie’s scale is going to be like, with it shot at actual F1 races, opting to put us in the driver’s seat the same way Top Gun: Maverick put us into the cockpit of a combat-ready jet. That movie made something like $1.5 billion, so clearly, the hope is that Pitt’s presence will pull in generations of filmgoers the same way Cruise’s did, although one should note Cruise’s box office prowess has always dwarfed Pitt’s, while the movie also doesn’t have the benefit of being a sequel to one of the most beloved action movies of all time. It also comes out on the same day as M3GAN 2.0, and only days before Jurassic World: Rebirth, so whether or not it will prove to be one of the year’s biggest hits or flops is very much up in the air.
Do you think F1 is going to live up to Top Gun: Maverick? Let us know in the comments!