When it comes to Apple’s biggest films, “F1: The Movie” has officially moved to pole position.
“F1” has generated $293 million at the global box office after 10 days of release, overtaking the entire theatrical runs of Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” ($158 million worldwide) and Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” ($221 million) to stand as Apple’s highest-grossing movie to date. That’s not a particularly difficult benchmark to break, since Apple has only released five films theatrically and two of them, “Fly Me to the Moon” ($42 million) and “Argylle” ($96 million), were outright flops.
Yet the ticket sales for “F1” are at least a step in the right direction for the fledgling studio’s theatrical ambitions. After Apple siphoned off a string of commercial misfires (with budgets at or above $200 million, neither “Killers of the Flower Moon” nor “Napoleon” were in danger of turning a theatrical profit), “F1” was considered an inflection point for the tech giant. There was a growing internal sense that if a crowd-pleaser like “F1” didn’t work on the big screen, Apple would be better off abandoning the movie business in favor of television. After all, the company has fielded plenty of small screen successes on AppleTV+ including “Severance” and “Ted Lasso.”
Apple’s future film strategy won’t hinge solely on the success of “F1.” And more importantly, the racing drama isn’t close to climbing out of the red. “F1” cost more than $250 million to produce and roughly $100 million more to market, which means the tentpole will require multiple laps around the track to justify its massive price tag. But these ticket sales, which are encouraging for any adult-skewing original film, at least give Apple a reason to stay the course. Oh yeah, it also helps that Apple has a $3 trillion market cap and doesn’t face the same financial pressure of traditional studios.
Directed by Joseph Kosinski (“Top Gun: Maverick”), “F1” stars Brad Pitt as a has-been Formula One driver who emerges from retirement to coach a rookie driver and save a failing team. The film landed in theaters in late June with $57 million domestically and $146 million worldwide, easily handing Apple its biggest opening weekend to date. Positive word-of-mouth should contribute to the movie’s staying power, even as “F1” endures strong headwinds from “Jurassic World Rebirth” and upcoming blockbuster hopefuls like “Superman” and “Fantastic Four: The First Steps.” Outside of the United States and Canada, where “F1” has revved to $109.5 million, top-earning territories include China ($22 million), the United Kingdom ($17.3 million), Mexico ($12.3 million), France ($11.5 million) and Australia ($9.8 million).
Because the movie was filmed with immersive Imax cameras as the filmmaking team circumnavigated the real Formula 1 global circuit, “F1” has been a huge draw on premium large format screens. So far, Imax alone has fueled $60 million globally, accounting for 20.4% of the film’s worldwide total.