Who said anything about safe?
On Sunday, Apple Original Films and Warner Bros. debuted the first trailer for “F1,” the blockbuster Formula 1 racing thriller from “Top Gun: Maverick” director Joseph Kosinski with Oscar winner Brad Pitt in the lead role.
The film, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, focuses on a former driver (Pitt) “who returns to Formula 1, alongside Damson Idris as his teammate at APXGP, a fictional team on the grid.” To help with the authenticity, seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton served as a producer on the film and a creative consultant; Kosinski and his team shot the film during actual Grand Prix weekends with Pitt and Idris driving real race cars.
“We’ve got Brad and Damson actually driving the cars, which is pretty spectacular in itself, but to do that in front of a live audience and at the speeds they’re doing it and figuring out a way to capture it,” Kosinski told Deadline in an interview published Sunday. “The logistics of it are unlike anything I’ve done before. We’re shooting at the actual Grands Prix, there are certain aspects of this film where we’re working in very, very tight windows, shooting on the track, between practice and qualifying sessions, in front of hundreds of thousands of people.”
The trailer leans heavily on genuineness, with an extended scene at the end featuring Pitt’s character behind the wheel of a speeding racer. If the shot recalls a moment from “Top Gun: Maverick” when Tom Cruise’s character is shown flying his jet at top speeds, it’s probably no accident. But as Kosinski – a Directors Guild Award nominee for “Top Gun: Maverick” – explained, “F1” required a greater level of detail than the Cruise Oscar nominee.
“It’s the next generation from what we did on ‘Top Gun.’ Everything is much smaller and the big innovation that is that we’re now able to control the movement of the cameras on the cars,” he said. “We’re not locked into these kinds of fixed positions we had on Top Gun. Now we have real-time control of panning and focusing them while shooting through a very extensive RF network that we’ve built around the tracks.”
In addition to Pitt and Idris, “F1” also stars Oscar winner Javier Bardem, Emmy winner Tobias Menzies, and Oscar nominee Kerry Condon. The Apple feature will eventually stream on Apple TV+ but not before it enjoys a global IMAX rollout via Warner Bros. That theatrical launch is set for June 27, 2025.
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