Montreal – When they started working together in the new movie “F1”, the living legend of Formula 1 Lewis Hamilton was pleasantly surprised to see that Brad Pitt knew what he was doing behind the wheel of a racing car.
“I already had a little feeling. I wasn’t completely alien. I worked as a driver coach when I was a child just to earn some money, and I had some pretty bad drivers on the road!” Hamilton, a seven -time world champion that runs for Ferrari and is producer of the film, told NBC News at a media conference before the Canadian Grand Prize on Sunday. “Immediately, you could see that I had a concept of management line.”
Hollywood has made many films about the races and formula 1. But “F1 the Movie”, an original Apple movie movie that is being theatically released by Warner Bros. On June 27, it offers the spectators something they had never seen before: a great production of budget filmed with the real pilots of the races and the real equipment, combining the authentic luminaires of F1 in the cast while filming on weekends of the great chisels.
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Joseph Kosinski organized a projection on Thursday in Montreal for Insiders and F1 reporters, including NBC News, Before the Race Weekend and a dazzling launch event of the red carpet on Monday in New York.
The film arrives at a time for a lucrative relationship between Hollywood and Formula 1. The popularity of sport has shot in the United States in the last five years, and F1 executives expect the first film of its kind to help the international series to penetrate more deeply into its first priority market.
Pitt plays the protagonist Sonny Hayes, a fictional F1 pilot whose promising young race was reduced after a horrible accident in the 1990s, but who makes the return more unlikely decades later with the fictional team of APXGP. It is an adventure story, heartbreak and the insatiable search for glory, with the emotions and dangers of Formula 1 captured by one of the most famous actors in the United States.
The character is a reckless who embodies elements of real life pilots Max Verstappen and James Hunt, bringing a high intellectual coefficient of races and a special ability to double the rules in his favor. He is enlisted in a movement of despair by a former F1 teammate turned into a team’s owner, played by Javier Bardem, to drive with a young newbird, portrayed by Damson Idris, who is desperate to demonstrate his worth in a car that is too weak to compete for the victories. Your team can soon cease to exist if you can’t change things soon.
Pitt was “openly super mind and really deepened what is needed to be a racing driver, which was really great to see,” said Hamilton.
Hamilton described him as the most “immersive” film ever made about races, or maybe any other sport, “in the sense of filming on the weekends of the race.”
The film also includes tempting images on the track and a plot that takes advantage of the strategic mischief and chess movements that make the sport exciting. And there are accidents. Many of them, including the fiery.
Pitt “did all his own driving,” Bruckheimer said in an interview, having trained for three months, first in a formula 3 car before graduating in faster machinery.
“The saddest day for Brad is when he had to leave the car and wrapped the movie. He was more relieved than any other person that everyone was safe,” he said.
And because it is Hollywood, Pitt’s character is part of a romantic plot with the character of Kerry Condon, Kate McKenna, his technical director, who was commissioned to build a winning car.
“Our ambition was to make a real career movie,” said Kosinski, who has also directed films like “Top Gun: Maverick.” “And we want it to be a film that works not only for experts like all of you who live and breathe this world every day, but also want it to be a film that plays people who know nothing about Formula 1 or other sports. The most important thing, of course, is that we only tell a great story about redemption and friendship and team in this incredible sport.”
However, it is likely that F1 addicts can detect some things that could not, or not, in real life. Pitt’s F1 car in the movie, clearly thinner than the real F1 cars that are running, is a formula 2 car, for example.
A driver would not be talking with the head of his team at the Pit Lane in the middle of the race through his helmet and deafening noise. In addition, there are only so many pranks F1 will tolerate a pilot who tries to pretend the result of the race.
“We wanted to find how far you can push it so you can reach the edge directly,” Kosinski said, adding that they consulted with Hamilton about how to achieve that balance.
But the scenes that can question the races are part of the bargain achieved to make the film acceptable for a broader audience, serving as important ingredients in the plot.
“What we are trying to do with this movie is, first of all, to entertain the public,” Bruckheimer said. “That is the key. It’s not a documentary; it’s a movie. I hope they would move you emotionally.”
The Formula 1 CEO, Stefano Domenicali, told journalists in Montreal that it requires “very F1 eyes” to think that the film glamorizes the rupture of the rules.
“If you look at the audience that will see the movie, this will be perceived as racing action, authentic struggle,” he said. “And that’s what will come out. I’m quite sure of that.”
Even so, there is a lot of realistic dialogue for F1 fans to delight. According to the Hamilton Council, Sky Sports commentators, David Croft and Martin Brundle, the Voices of F1 for British and American fans, are also the broadcasters of the film.
Croft told NBC News that he and Brundle spent 19 hours filming their scenes. Your favorite part? Working with Kosinski, Croft said: “A director I have had in such a high esteem for many years and with whom it was a real privilege to work to create what luckily the public sees as a truly authentic F1 movie.”
The script includes talking about flying and subviring, the use of “DR” to go faster and sacrifice the straight line speed to obtain better curves. The Pitt character leaves a “Eau Rouge” reference, and there is a story that involves the late Ayrton Senna of the 1990s, all of which the experts of Formula 1 will appreciate.
“He is threading a needle,” Kosinski said about attracting both casual spectators and fans of the hard formula.
Apple’s senior vice president Eddy Cue said that when the film was screened in the United States, “very few people” said they had seen a formula 1 career.
“When we finish and ask how many of you you would like to go see a race now, literally every hand goes up,” he said. “And then we believe there is a great opportunity to grow sport worldwide with this movie. And I think it will.”
Hollywood seeks to take advantage of this potential by aggressively promoting the film throughout the television and in F1 races.
“We will see how sport grows even more, but obviously it was interesting and pleasant to see or see it,” said Sauber’s driver Nico Hulkenberg, who joined F1 in 2010, long before the rise of the United States. “I think the public will like it. I think they have captured more angles of the industry, of what the teams and pilots do: how much enters it, especially the preparation time and among the careers. Personally, I liked it. It was great.”
After years of stagnating the American public, F1 unlocked something special when customizing the sport to reach the new and casual. He found a way to transcend the technical side, using social networks so that faces and human drivers accessible to the regular public.
The commercial side of F1 and its equipment became relentless content creation factories that seek online commitment. That connection, raised by the popular “Drive To Survive” series of Netflix, attracted a newer, younger and more feminine audience.
“It is one of the biggest films we will see in this decade,” said Peter Crolla, a Haas F1 veteran who was recently hired to be a team manager of the new Cadillac F1 team backed by GM next year. “They have put every ounce of energy they could have done. It is the level of detail to which they have gone [in] The desire to make it as realistic and integrate into sport as they have done. At the end of 2024 we do not even feel that an F1 film was filmed. It was as if it were literally a 11th team. ”
Hamilton loved with love some of his conversations with Pitt when Pitt was training to drive a real racing car for the film, feeling that the for forces were shook through his body.
“Through that process, it was surprising to talk to Brad and see his shock. It’s something like, ‘God, why are our bodies happening?'” Hamilton said. “I would send me a text message after the test, such as ‘my appreciation for what drivers do is even higher than it was,’ so I hope that is reflected in driving.”
