There are currently a lot of IMAX tickets sold for the Thursday and Friday screenings of the F1 The Movie. The premium format is said to be a very immersive experience for the film and our own Chris Bumbray glowed in his 9/10 review that it’s “one of the most awe-inspiring works of pure spectacle seen on the big screen in years. It’s stunning to look at, and the IMAX ratio makes the racing scenes feel like a rollercoaster ride.” He also stated, “It can’t be denied that F1 is an absolute rollercoaster ride of a movie, and – like Sinners – helps make the case for theatres still being essential to a particular kind of filmmaking. Hopefully, this is the blockbuster hit it deserves to be.”
He has also written a column about why you should see F1 in IMAX, which you can check out HERE. Deadline has reported that the Brad Pitt film from Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski is already seeing $10 million in early Thursday preview screenings. F1 could be a big turning point for Apple Original Films, as the studio put out some seemingly audience-grabbing films, but, per Deadline, the company “struggled in its wide theatrical release stateside following its very big budget [theater-premiere films], the disastrous Argylle ($96.2M WW), the retrenched Pitt and George Clooney noir Wolfs and Killers of the Flower Moon ($158.7M domestic off a $200M production cost).”
This early weekend showing from F1 has already risen above other Apple Original Films, like Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, which previewed with $3 million, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, which brought in $2.6 million before the weekend, Matthew Vaughn’s Argylle, that came in surprisingly low at $1.7 million and Greg Berlanti’s Fly Me to the Moon, which only pulled $875k for its early Thursday preview. The high-profile racing film also left the comparable Ford v Ferrari in the dust, as that film would take off with $2.1 million in Thursday previews and finished the weekend with a $31.4 million opening at the box office.
F1 The Movie also stars Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Tobias Menzies, Kim Bodnia, and Javier Bardem, and has been shot during actual Grand Prix weekends as the team competes against the titans of the sport.
The synopsis reads, “Dubbed ‘the greatest that never was,’ Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) was FORMULA 1’s most promising phenom of the 1990s until an accident on the track nearly ended his career. Thirty years later, he’s a nomadic racer-for-hire when he’s approached by his former teammate Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), owner of a struggling FORMULA 1 team that is on the verge of collapse. Ruben convinces Sonny to come back to FORMULA 1 for one last shot at saving the team and being the best in the world. He’ll drive alongside Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), the team’s hotshot rookie intent on setting his own pace. But as the engines roar, Sonny’s past catches up with him and he finds that in FORMULA 1, your teammate is your fiercest competition—and the road to redemption is not something you can travel alone.”
