Director Tim Burton was having a pretty difficult time at the box office for over a decade before Beetlejuice Beetlejuice broke past expectations and grossed around $450 million worldwide. His sole “hit” during that difficult phase was the literary adaptation Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Described as a cross between the Harry Potter books and the X-Men films, Miss Peregrine grossed nearly $300 million worldwide in 2016, against a reported budget of $110 million. The movie featured Eva Green, Asa Butterfield, and Ella Purnell in the central roles, and received mixed reviews. Miss Peregrine has now been overtaken at the global box office by Apple’s hit sports drama F1.
Directed by Joseph Kosinski and starring Brad Pitt in the lead role of a seasoned race car driver summoned to rescue a failing Formula One team from disaster, F1 has also passed the $300 million mark at the worldwide box office. It’s now the highest-grossing film produced by a tech company. F1 was distributed theatrically by Warner Bros. — the studio is on a tremendous run, having delivered hits such as A Minecraft Movie, Sinners, and Final Destination Bloodlines already. F1 has overtaken Bloodlines, and should be able to pass Sinners in a week or two. It’s currently projected to deliver over $500 million worldwide.
It needs to gross over $531 million globally in order to become the highest-grossing film of Pitt’s career, ahead of World War Z. However, this would still be only a moderately successful result for the movie, which reportedly cost as much as $300 million to produce. F1 opened to positive reviews, and is currently sitting at a solid 83% score on Rotten Tomatoes. The film’s audience score is sitting at a near-perfect 97% on the aggregator website, where the critics’ consensus reads, “Driven by Brad Pitt’s laidback magnetism and sporting a souped-up engine courtesy of Joseph Kosinski’s kinetic direction, F1 The Movie brings vintage cool across the finish line.”
‘Miss Peregrine’ Couldn’t Spawn a Franchise
By comparison, Miss Peregrine holds a 65% score on RT, where the consensus reads, “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children proves a suitable match for Tim Burton’s distinctive style, even if it’s on stronger footing as a visual experience than a narrative one.” Burton is basking in the success of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, before which he executive produced the massively popular Netflix series Wednesday. Starring Jenna Ortega, the show is set to return for a second season soon. You can watch F1 in theaters, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
