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The Guardian
5 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Brad Pitt in the paddock: how F1 the Movie went deep to keep fans coming
After the British Grand Prix last year the drivers took their places in the media zone to conduct interviews, with Formula One world champions Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen and Fernando Alonso among them. Yet it was all but impossible not to cast a glance sideways as Brad Pitt nonchalantly strolled out to face the microphones and cameras of his own, entirely staged, media scrum. None of us in the media pack openly goggled at the fact that Hollywood's A-list had joined the sweaty throng, because Pitt was there filming what would become F1 the Movie. And we, as with everyone else, were under strict instructions to behave normally. Indeed, as farcical as it might sound, by this point we had become almost inured to the presence of the stars and their crew after several years of being part and parcel of the F1 circus. Almost but not quite. I mean, it was Brad Pitt … The resulting film, released next Wednesday by Apple Studios, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Top Gun: Maverick's Joseph Kosinski, stars Pitt as the veteran driver Sonny Hayes, who makes a comeback to the sport after a 30-year absence to rescue the ailing and also fictional APX team. The film, which has had largely positive reviews so far – including from the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw – came about through an unusually proactive collaboration between the filmmakers and the sport. F1 bent over backwards to ensure it went well. The production filmed at circuits on real race weekends for over two years. The APX team enjoyed their own pit garage, their own hospitality and their own uniforms. With Pitt being filmed alongside real drivers and indeed the media around the grid and the 'paddock' (the working area of an F1 team), the filmmakers were effectively embedded within the sport as its 11th team – perhaps as deeply as it is possible for an entity to go without actually being a real team. They have also used real cars, albeit less-powerful Formula 2 models modified to look as close as possible to F1 cars by the Mercedes F1 team. Pitt and his co-star Damson Idris have filmed in cars, with Pitt doing all his own driving. He's been praised by Hamilton for picking up the skills quickly. Hamilton is both one of the producers and a special adviser to ensure the picture is as authentic as possible. For the producers, the collaboration is relatively straightforward. They wanted to make as authoritative, exciting and immersive a film as possible. And for the sport the movie is a key part of its global strategy. For many years F1 enjoyed a strong but undoubtedly niche-based support, largely centred on Europe and with a notably ageing, white-male demographic. But since Liberty Media took over the sport in 2017 from its former chief executive Bernie Ecclestone, who had been in charge for nearly 40 years, it has undergone a rapid and dramatic transformation. Liberty has expanded its reach, notably using social media and promotion to actively target a younger, more diverse audience. The enormously successful Netflix series Drive to Survive followed, its dramatic and sharply edited retelling of each season proving a huge hit with a market previously indifferent to F1. Drive to Survive is now in its seventh season since 2019. Suddenly the sport had an entirely new, enthusiastic fanbase; younger, excited and building momentum across the world – notably in the market every non US-based sport craves, North America. F1 has moved from one moderately well-attended race in Texas to three sellouts a year, now also including Miami and a night-race promoted by F1 itself on the streets of Las Vegas. Tyler Epp, the Miami GP president, noted that their audience is 'growing most aggressively in the 20- and 30-year-old buyer. Our data does not tell us that this is an audience of 30- to 60-year-old white men'. Instead, Epp says, there is a 60-40 male-female split – an 'eclectic, diverse group'. Recently, both golf and tennis have tried, with a lesser degree of success, to emulate the enormous surge of interest F1 has enjoyed. Sign up to The Recap The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend's action after newsletter promotion F1's willingness to accommodate Hollywood is shaped by this prism, the film a chance to sell the sport to a potentially huge audience who just might be converted. Sylvester Stallone tried to make an F1 film in the late 1990s but, given a lack of cooperation from Ecclestone, ultimately switched the story to the US-based CART series and the commercial and critical flop Driven was the result. Stefano Domenicali, a former team principal at Ferrari and president of the Italian car manufacturer Lamborghini, is the chief executive of F1, an accomplished operator with an easy-going persona. He is relaxed with F1 teams and Hollywood moguls and has been at the heart of the resurgence. 'I think that if Netflix was big, that the movie will be massive,' he said this year. 'We're going to hit a target that is not yet present.' Purists will sniff at some of the picture's deviations from certain aspects of F1's realities, and its concessions to dramatic and narrative convention to propel it as entertainment. But it was meant to be a blockbuster not a documentary and that's what matters to F1 and the producers. After the film's screenings in the US, Apple's senior vice-president, Eddy Cue, said that 'very few' of those attending had previously seen an F1 race but their reactions were instructive. 'When we finish and we ask how many of you would like to go see a race now, literally every single hand goes up,' he said. 'We think there's a huge, huge opportunity to grow the sport all over the world with this movie and I think it will do that.'
Asharq Al-Awsat
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Movie Review: From Bumper to Bumper, ‘F1' Is Formula One Spectacle
The wide-screen spectacle of Formula One gets a gleaming, rip-roaring workout in Joseph Kosinski's 'F1,' a fine-tuned machine of a movie that, in its most riveting racing scenes, approaches a kind of high-speed splendor. Kosinski, who last endeavored to put moviegoers in the seat of a fighter jet in 'Top Gun: Maverick,' has moved to the open cockpits of Formula One with much the same affection, if not outright need, for speed. A lot of the same team is back. Jerry Bruckheimer produces. Ehren Kruger, a co-writer on 'Maverick,' takes sole credit here. Hans Zimmer, a co-composer previously, supplies the thumping score. And, again, our central figure is an older, high-flying cowboy plucked down in an ultramodern, gas-guzzling conveyance to teach a younger generation about old-school ingenuity and, maybe, the enduring appeal of denim. But whereas Tom Cruise is a particularly forward-moving action star, Brad Pitt, who stars as the driving-addicted Sonny Hayes in 'F1,' has always been a more arrestingly poised presence. Think of the way he so calmly and half-interestedly faces off with Bruce Lee in Quentin Tarantino's 'Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood.' In the opening scene of 'F1,' he's sleeping in a van with headphones on when someone rouses him. He splashes some water on his face and walks a few steps over to the Daytona oval, where he quickly enters his team's car, in the midst of a 24-hour race. Pitt goes from zero to 180 mph in a minute. Sonny, a long-ago phenom who crashed out of Formula One decades earlier and has since been racing any vehicle, even a taxi, he can get behind the wheel of, is approached by an old friend, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) about joining his flagging F1 team, APX. Sonny turns him down at first but, of course, he joins and 'F1' is off to the races. The title sequence, exquisitely timed to the syncopated rhythms of Zimmer's score, is a blistering introduction. The hotshot rookie driver Noah Pearce (Damson Idris) is just running a practice lap, but Kosinski, his camera adeptly moving in and out of the cockpit, uses the moment to plunge us into the high-tech world of Formula One, where every inch of the car is connected to digital sensors monitored by a watchful team. Here, that includes technical director Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon) and Kaspar Molinski (Kim Bodnia), the team's chief. Verisimilitude is of obvious importance to the filmmakers, who bathe this very Formula One-authorized film in all the sleek operations and globe-trotting spectacle of the sport. That Apple, which produced the film, would even go for such a high-priced summer movie about Formula One is a testament to the upswing in popularity of a sport once quite niche in America, and of the halo effects of both the Netflix series 'Formula 1: Drive to Survive' and the seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, an executive producer on 'F1.' Whether 'F1' pleases diehards, I'll leave to more ardent followers of the circuit. But what I can say definitively is that Claudio Miranda knows how to shoot it. The cinematographer, who has shot all of Kosinski's films as well as wonders like Ang Lee's 'Life of Pi,' brings Formula One to vivid, visceral life. When 'F1' heads to the big races, Miranda is always simultaneously capturing the zooming cars from the asphalt while backgrounding it with the sweeping spectacle of a course like the UK's fabled Silverstone Circuit. OK, you might be thinking, so the racing is good; is there a story? There's what I'd call enough of one, though you might have to go to the photo finish to verify that. When Sonny shows up, and rapidly turns one practice vehicle into toast, it's clear that he's going to be an agent of chaos at APX, a low-ranking team that's in heavy debt and struggling to find a car that performs. This gives Pitt a fine opportunity to flash his charisma, playing Sonny as an obsessive who refuses any trophy and has no real interest in money, either. The flashier, media-ready Noah watches Sonny's arrival with skepticism, and the two begin more as rivals than teammates. Idris is up to the mano-a-mano challenge, but he's limited by a role ultimately revolving around and reducing to a young Black man learning a lesson in work ethic. A relationship does develop, but 'F1' struggles to get its characters out of the starting blocks, keeping them closer to the cliches they start out as. The actor who, more than anyone, keeps the momentum going is Condon, playing an aerodynamics specialist whose connection with Pitt's Sonny is immediate. Just as she did in between another pair of headstrong men in 'The Banshees of Inisherin,' Condon is a rush of naturalism. If there's something preventing 'F1' from hitting full speed, it's its insistence on having its characters constantly voice Sonny's motivations. The same holds true on the race course, where broadcast commentary narrates virtually every moment of the drama. That may be a necessity for a sport where the crucial strategies of hot tires and pit-stop timing aren't quite household concepts. But the best car race movies — from 'Grand Prix' to 'Senna' to 'Ferrari' — know when to rely on nothing but the roar of an engine. 'F1' steers predictably to the finish line, cribbing here and there from sports dramas before it. (Tobias Menzies plays a board member with uncertain corporate goals.) When 'F1' does, finally, quiet down, for one blissful moment, the movie, almost literally, soars. It's not quite enough to forget all the high-octane macho dramatics before it, but it's enough to glimpse another road 'F1' might have taken.
Geek Tyrant
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Orlando Bloom and Jerry Bruckheimer Tease New PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN Movie — GeekTyrant
The Pirates of the Caribbean isn't quite dead, right now it's just drifting between ports, and it sounds like Disney might finally be preparing to set sail again, though which direction the ship will take is still very much up in the air. During a recent appearance on This Morning (via SFX Magazine), Orlando Bloom, who played Will Turner offered a cryptic tease when asked if he might return. 'There's been all kinds of things. Who knows? There's been talk. I can't say anything at the moment, because I really don't know. I think they're trying to work out what it would all look like. 'I, personally, think it would be great to get the band back together. That would be great. But there are always different ideas, so we'll see where it lands.' Disney and longtime producer Jerry Bruckheimer are apparently looking at two official projects. One is a full franchise reboot written by Jeff Nathanson ( Dead Men Tell No Tales, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ), featuring an entirely new cast and story. The other is a Margot Robbie-led spin-off with a script by Christina Hodson ( Bumblebee, The Flash ), a project that's been talked about for a while but hasn't officially moved forward. Interestingly, there's a third option now floating in the waters, a new installment that reunites some of the original cast, including Bloom, and possibly even Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley. In fact, Bruckheimer himself recently confirmed to ScreenRant that a script is in the works that could do exactly that. 'We're working on a screenplay. Hopefully we'll get it right — and then we'll make it. We really want to make it, that's for sure.' When pressed on whether this would be a complete reboot with all-new faces, Bruckheimer clarified: 'Well, not all new actors. We'll have some back. I'm not going to tell you which ones — you'll have to guess.' With five films already released, and Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017) setting up a new generation of pirates via Brenton Thwaites' Henry Turner, it's possible the next entry could blend of new blood and legacy characters might be the smartest way forward. Especially if Disney wants to reignite fan enthusiasm without completely abandoning the swashbuckling soul of the series. So, what kind of voyage should Disney embark on? A reboot? A Margot Robbie-led detour? Or one last grand adventure with the original crew? Either way, the wind's picking up, and this ship might be ready to sail sooner than we think.
CNN
a day ago
- Entertainment
- CNN
‘Are you alive?': ‘F1' actor says his mom checked in after filming high-speed racing scenes
CNN's Sara Sidner talks to legendary director Jerry Bruckheimer and actors Javier Bardem and Damson Idris about the grueling task of translating Formula One drivers' experience to the big screen.
CNN
a day ago
- Entertainment
- CNN
‘Are you alive?': ‘F1' actor says his mom checked in after filming high-speed racing scenes
CNN's Sara Sidner talks to legendary director Jerry Bruckheimer and actors Javier Bardem and Damson Idris about the grueling task of translating Formula One drivers' experience to the big screen.
