Phenomenal athletes and actors. Brad Pitt and Damson Idris share the challenges and unwavering support that helped them reach F1® speeds. F1TheMovie is now streaming exclusively on Apple TV https://apple.co/_F1
From Apple Original Films and the filmmakers from Top Gun: Maverick comes the high-octane, action-packed feature film F1, starring Brad Pitt and directed by Joseph Kosinski. The film is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, Kosinski, seven-time FORMULA 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton, Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner and Chad Oman.
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.
F1 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.
Kosinski directs from a screenplay by Ehren Kruger. The film is executive produced by Daniel Lupi. Collaborating with Kosinski behind the scenes are his creative team, including director of photography Claudio Miranda, production designers Mark Tildesley and Ben Munro, editor Stephen Mirrione, costume designer Julian Day, casting director Lucy Bevan and composer Hans Zimmer.
Apple Original Films Presents a Monolith Pictures / Jerry Bruckheimer / Plan B Entertainment / Dawn Apollo Films Production, A Film by Joseph Kosinski, F1, distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures.
Apple TV is a streaming service with original stories from the most creative minds in TV and film. Watch now on the Apple TV app: https://apple.co/_AppleTVapp Subscription required for Apple TV
Brad and Damson have genuinely, hand on heart,
been driving quicker than any near normal human being will ever, ever get to drive.
You know, I started off as a kid, like dirt bikes, and really got heavily into MotoGP.
And then I started veering into F1, and now here we are.
I went on the simulator before any audition.
I even created a character on the F1 game and, like, named him Joshua Pierce.
I definitely manifested this.
Brad trained for three months along with Damson
to be able to drive the cars, and they both are phenomenal athletes.
I mean, the physicality alone is unbelievable.
We've had Craig Dalby, Luciano,
taking them around the tracks, getting them familiar with incredibly high speeds.
Started and just taught them the basics, you know, how to actually get around a lap.
Get them comfortable, get them consistent in doing high speed.
After that, we started bringing cars in closer to them,
getting to look where they need to be looking.
He's one of those, like, freakishly talented guys.
Luch was my guy. He was F2 world champion.
We just had a wealth of knowledge at our fingertips.
Driving with Damson Idris has been amazing.
From word go, how he's pushed boundaries has been pretty impressive to see.
Luciano and Craig specifically, they've taught me how to walk and talk like a driver.
Definitely indebted to them.
Brad and Damson, they've had a lot of seat time,
probably as much as any driver in the championship.
It's intense in there just to get around one lap,
let alone remember their lines and actually their choreography.
When Brad and Damson drive, you know, you can see that they're fighting the car,
they're battling against G-forces, they're concentrating, they've got focus in their eyes.
Having these two both go through the process of the mental challenge,
the speed in which you're taking information in,
also the effect of the body, how strong the brakes are, the G-forces, you can't fake that.
Feeling of downforce is like no other experience.
It pushes you into the item.
Every time Damson gets in a car, he's going to be driving exceedingly quick.
Doing that over a serious amount of laps, it's been really important for us to condition his neck.
Just the G-force alone in these cars, when you're going that fast,
it has a real wear on your neck.
There's a slightly different focus between Brad and Damson.
Brad has much more of a mobility component to that,
but then we still wake up like the areas that we really need to,
the mid-back area, around the back of his shoulders, abdominals and his neck.
We have the actors, we cast the movie, but you've got to build the cars.
So we're very fortunate because Mercedes designed our car.
It is sleek, it is beautiful and I'm sure they're cutting to it right now
so you can see how beautiful the car is.
We're running a mechachrome F2 car, no power steering, it's been stretched.
Mercedes did our aero package.
We took a Formula 2 chassis and a Formula 2 competition engine
and I stretched it by 200 millimeters to make it almost look like a Formula 1 car.
One of the apex cars we built was an electric car,
which was perfect for pulling in for a pit stop, pulling out, backing up and doing it over and over.
F2 engines are very finicky and you can't start them over and over again.
25 pit stops in one go, a Formula 1 car would have exploded by then.
All my hair would have fallen out.
So we have, I think, probably the first and only electric F1 car
and it proved to be a really, really valuable tool.
So all in all, I think, if I'm calculating right,
we've built 12 cars, including crash cars.
I think they've done the equivalent of two and a half Formula 1 seasons worth of driving
since we began.
In terms of speed, I think it must be the fastest, if not one of the fastest,
car chases in a movie ever.
It's made me develop a new respect for the drivers, you know,
people who have been doing this, living this, breathing this their entire lives.
Aside from the people on the track, the people off the track
that are a part of building these amazing machines, I take my hat off to them.
