“Top Gun: Maverick” director Joseph Kosinski became interested in Formula One like many Americans: through the popular Netflix series “Drive to Survive.”
He saw that the sport had the potential for an exciting movie filled with high tension, the intense competition in racing, and the idea that your teammate could be your biggest opponent.
“I don’t think there’s any other sport that’s quite like that,” Kosinski said. “It’s ripe for drama.”
Movies have long been fascinated with car racing, and Formula One’s popularity has grown in recent years. Making a movie similar to “Top Gun” seemed like a good idea. However, it would take almost four years to bring that vision to life, and the result, “F1,” will be in theaters on June 27.
Creating the movie was a complex project that required cooperation with Formula One, innovative camera technology, and having Brad Pitt, one of the biggest movie stars, actually drive a real race car at speeds of 180 miles per hour on film—multiple times.
Getting Formula One’s approval
Hollywood was easier to convince than the Formula One organization. By the time Kosinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer approached them, Pitt had already agreed to star, and they decided to partner with Apple to make the movie to ensure a major release (which Warner Bros. is handling). Then came the meeting with Formula One.
“When you come in, the first thing they think is you’re going to make them look bad,” Bruckheimer said. “I went through this with when I went to the Navy the first time on ‘Top Gun.’”
There were many worries: potential accidents, and concerns about the villain. But the filmmakers explained that this wasn’t a story about a villain. It was about a rivalry between two drivers—a younger one (Damson Idris) and an older one (Pitt) trying to help the younger driver improve.
Bruckheimer said it took almost a year to convince the league, and after that, they had to talk to each individual team. But once everyone agreed, they opened up their world to the filmmakers.
“There’s no way we could have made this film without that partnership with Formula One,” Kosinski said.
With Formula One’s cooperation, they were able to build a garage at the Grand Prix for their fictional team, drive on the track during Grand Prix weekends in front of huge crowds, have their film cars on the track with real Formula One cars, and more. Pitt and Idris even stood with the drivers during the national anthems in Silverstone and Abu Dhabi. They were able to sit in on driver meetings and technical briefings.
Kosinski said, “It was full-on integration of these two worlds coming together.”
Getting the right cameras
In keeping with “Top Gun” style, part of the goal was to give the audience a real feeling of being in the driver’s seat. Seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton, who was involved early in the project, told Kosinski that he had never seen a film that truly captured the experience of being in a Formula One car.
“These Formula One cars, they deal in grams,” Kosinski explained. “Adding 100 pounds of camera equipment works against the very thing you’re trying to capture.”
Lewis Hamilton steers his carFor a year, they worked on engineering tiny cameras that were high quality enough for an IMAX movie but small enough to fit in the cars. They managed to shrink the cameras from the size they used in “Top Gun: Maverick,” where six Sony cameras were inside the cockpit, to about a quarter of that size (around 10×10 cm).
They also worked with Panavision to create a remote-controlled system that allowed the director of photography to adjust the cameras, something they couldn’t do on “Maverick.” They had 15 camera mounts in the cars and could use up to four at once while keeping the weight low.
“Every time you see Brad or Damson’s face, they’re really driving that car,” Kosinski said.
The filmmakers had limited time on the track between the official qualifying laps, which meant they had to be quick. “It was a technical feat and an organizational feat,” Bruckheimer said.
Kosinski got reassurance when Hamilton saw some of the racing footage and smiled. “He smiled and said, ‘It looks fast,’” Kosinski said. “I was like, ‘Oh, thank God.’ If Lewis says that we’re in a good place.”
Brad Pitt’s role
Kosinski said, “This movie needed an icon kind of at the center of it.” Since it was a big, complex, and expensive film, he wanted a top movie star. He knew Pitt liked cars, and about ten years ago, Pitt, Tom Cruise, and Kosinski even worked on a car movie that never happened. Kosinski felt that this was a role he had always wanted to see Pitt play.
The character Pitt plays is Sonny Hayes, a former racing legend who was once considered the best but had an accident that ended his Formula One career. Now, he races in all kinds of competitions but stays away from Formula One.
Kosinski explained that the film is about Hayes’ final chance to win an F1 race after helping a struggling team.
After the pitch, they visited a racetrack with Hamilton, and Pitt was instantly interested.
Brad Pitt and Damson Idris on the grid before the racePitt trained for three months to get used to the physical demands of driving the precise cars. He and his co-star, Idris, actually drove the cars at speeds of up to 180 mph, often in front of large crowds.
“The happiest day was when they said, ‘OK, it’s a wrap on driving,’ and he (Brad) climbed out of the car,” Bruckheimer said. “That was the best day for me because it is dangerous, it really is.”
The film’s big budget
The movie was very expensive, though not as costly as some reports claimed. Bruckheimer mentioned that they built six cars and transported them worldwide along with the production team.
“It’s like an army exercise moving vast groups of people and machinery around the world,” Bruckheimer said.
Kosinski and Bruckheimer both confirmed that the cost was significantly lower than the \$300 million figure that some people suggested.
“It’s expensive, don’t get me wrong. It’s an expensive movie,” Bruckheimer said. “But it was substantially lower than that number.”
The big question is whether audiences will turn out in large numbers. So far, test screenings have shown high scores across various groups. They promise that you don’t need to be an expert in Formula One to enjoy the movie, which will teach you what you need to know.
“It’s emotional, it’s exciting, it has humor,” Bruckheimer said. “We hope it’s a perfect summer movie.”
