Apple’s staked over $250 million on the F1 movie

Reports claim that the F1: The Movie had a US $250 million (roughly $341 million) budget, with Apple footing the massive bill to outbid the competition. However, producer Jerry Bruckheimer has disputed this by saying that the actual spend was tens of millions of dollars less than reported.

Regardless of that the movie was expensive and Apple’s biggest bet on filmmaking thus far. It’s a good bet, with the star power of Brad Pitt, the blockbuster filmmaking of Director Joseph Kosinski and the rising profile of F1 as a sport it seems like the right time to strike while the iron is hot.

Deadline predicts that the movie is going to have an opening weekend of $115 million which will be $40-$50 million in North America and then the remainder will be made internationally. As someone who bought tickets myself to see it opening night, those projections seem to be right. Almost all of the IMAX showtimes were mostly sold out and I know lots of people excited to see the film.

That said, it will need strong word of mouth if it wants to perform like Dune 2 or Top Gun Maverick and make over a billion. That said, the movie likely only needs around $550-$600 million to be considered successful, but it will face stiff competition from the upcoming Jurassic World Rebirth movie coming next week. That said, this could also be a big driver for Apple TV and I expect Apple is hoping that a big theatrical debut will also lead to more Apple TV+ signups.

A recent report from The Wall Street Journal also says if this does well Apple is considering getting into theatrical distrabution as well. Apple produces movies and distributes them on Apple TV+, but as of right now, it doesn’t have a team to manage the theatrical side. F1 is distributed by Warner Brothers, so Apple needs to share box office revenue with the tradional media company.

Source: Wall Street Journal, Deadline