Movies Joseph Kosinski and Brad Pitt's F1 Movie Now Costs $300M - Update: First Teaser

[TwinIon]

It's been known for a while that Joseph Kosinski (director of Top Gun: Maverick, Tron: Legacy, Oblivion) is making a movie about Formula One. With Brad Pitt starring, Kosinski's pledge to capture real racing, and 7 time champ Lewis Hamilton co-producing, it sparked a bidding war that ended with Apple getting the rights. Somehow, despite Apple's backing and the pedigree behind the film, it still doesn't have a theatrical distributor or a release date. The film will follow a veteran driver (Pitt) returning to the sport alongside a hot shot rookie to save a beleaguered team.

 

Most excitingly, Kosinski filmed during an actual Formula One weekend, putting Pitt behind the wheel of a real car (not an F1 car, but one dressed up to look the part). They setup a whole fake team, complete with a pit box and everything, and had them drive during a Gan Prix weekend. Originally the plan had been to take this setup to multiple races, but shortly after the filming weekend at Silverstone, the SAG strike started. Due to the scheduling and cost complications of being on the grid during real F1 races, plans for follow-up filming were canned.

 

Now it seems we have some idea how much all that cost, because the new report is that the budget has ballooned to over $300M.

 

I'm quite excited to see what Kosinski cooks up with this one. It's pretty cool that they were able to film during a real race weekend, though with the other filming days canceled, it'll be interesting to see if that footage ends up standing out against the presumably more conventional racing they end up using.

 

Update: The movie is now officially titled "F1" and we have the first teaser trailer:

 

[Best]

Wow. It will be really visually spectacular with that budget. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Just a bit more until it matches Insomniac's development costs for Spider-Man 2!

[SoberChef]

Saw a post the other day from the concession stand at an F-1 race and legit for like a couple sliders, some chicken strips & fries, it was nearly $300. Like no joke, just to see the race you have to have "fuck you money". 

[skillzdadirecta]

6 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Just a bit more until it matches Insomniac's development costs for Spider-Man 2!

Insane that videogame budgets have ballooned to this level. 

[Greatoneshere]

And the first teaser trailer has dropped and the racing footage looks great. Kind of a weird song choice that isn't synced that well with the footage but the visuals are great. First we had Ron Howard's Rush. Then we had James Mangold's Ford v. Ferrari. Then we got Neill Blomkamp's Gran Turismo. And then we got Michael Mann's Ferrari. And now we have Joseph Kosinski's F1 starring Brad Pitt (Tron: Legacy, Oblivion, Only the Brave, Top Gun: Maverick, Spiderhead). There is also an upcoming Netflix Senna biopic miniseries also coming out later this year about the racing legend (I highly recommend the 2010 documentary film about Senna called Senna). Anyways, it's interesting we've gotten 5 really good films (assuming F1 is good) about racing in just 10 years. I know F1 is on the rise in terms of popularity but still surprising. It's much better than the days of Sylvester Stallone's Driven or Aaron Paul's Need for Speed (which wasn't that bad but yeah). I don't even count the Fast & Furious franchise as "racing" movies. 

 

 

[TwinIon]

I've updated the OP, but we have the first trailer and an official title, simply "F1"

 

The were filming more of this at Silverstone during the race this weekend. I don't think they were on track, but Brad Pitt was in the paddock in costume race day and they were definitely filming some pit stop scenes. He was also seen in the interview pen after the race as the drivers did their own post race interviews.

 

Deadline has an interview with the Jerry Bruckheimer and Joseph Kosinski. They downplay the impact the strike had on filming and are trying to address some of the cost rumors:

 

Quote

 

DEADLINE: Jerry, you mentioned the strike and how that affected the filming schedule. There are reports the budget will hit the $300 million mark — are they in the right ballpark?

BRUCKHEIMER: It’s completely, unfortunately, tens of millions of dollars out of whack in the wrong direction, and in the right direction for us. What people don’t realize is, first of all, we’re shooting in rebate [locations], England has a big rebate, lots of Europe has rebates and so does Abu Dhabi. It all lowers the budget. Plus, we’ve raised more money for our car [through sponsorship] than some Formula 1 teams. You take that all into consideration and it really drops that number quite a bit lower than what people would think.

 

 

Not that it matters a whole lot, since Apple is paying for it and they don't seem to care.

 

They also confirmed that it's getting an IMAX release, which I don't think was ever really in doubt. 

[TwinIon]

Watching the teaser, my wife is convinced the cars look too narrow. They did use modified F2 cars, which are much more narrow, but they put F1 style aero on there, so I'm not sure how much more narrow they actually are. I think they look that way because of the ultrawide lenses they're using.

 

I think the racing footage looks great so far. Very excited to see what they end up doing with it. They're certainly going all out on authenticity.

 

The one place where they're not going very authentic is in the helmet. It looks to me like Pitt is wearing a more standard racing helmet with a fairly large visor. In F1 the window is quite narrow for additional saftey. The authenticity trade off is probably worthwhile if you're going to go through all the trouble to get Brad Pitt in a real race car though, so I'll give them a pass on this one.

 

It's fun to see fan favorite Guenther Steiner make a brief appearance.

 

 

 

Someone on Reddit has pointed out that it seems they used onboard footage from Alpine in 2023 for at least one shot at Spa.

 

I have the feeling we'll be seeing a lot of that kind of thing, using real race footage with digital car swaps.

 

I continue to be excited for this one. F1 is really good right now, Kosinski seems to be at the top of his game. There is no expense spared in the making of this film. If the script is any good at all it should be a fun watch.

[Greatoneshere]

1 hour ago, TwinIon said:

If the script is any good at all it should be a fun watch.

 

This is my one concern with the film. I don't think the screenplay will matter too much given a lot of the film's runtime will be taken up with action racing sequences but the sole credited screenwriter for the film so far has only been Ehren Kruger. Ehren Kruger is a terrible screenwriter. Just focusing on films he solely wrote, he's been riding on his first written film, Arlington Road (which is really good), ever since. This guy wrote movies like Scream 3, Reindeer Games, the American Ring 1+2 (Ring 1 was good but based on great source material, Ring 2 is terrible), The Brothers Grimm, Michael Bay's Transformers 3+4 and the recent live-action Dumbo. So . . . yeah. But perhaps more screenwriters have been on the project since it was announced Kruger was writing this, official WGA credits are still not out yet for this film I think.

[stepee]

That music sync on the trailer was so bad lol did they use AI for that 

[SoberChef]