Star Brad Pitt is eyeing one of the biggest box office debuts of his career this weekend, with the sports drama F1 launching in theaters worldwide. The movie is also expected to deliver the top debut in the history of Apple Studios, ahead of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, and is aiming for a $55 million three-day haul domestically. F1 is off to a great start, having earned excellent reviews from both audiences and critics. In fact, the movie has earned the best CinemaScore of Pitt’s career, in addition to a near-perfect audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
This establishes director Joseph Kosinski as a particularly skilled blockbuster filmmaker; his last movie was Top Gun: Maverick, which grossed nearly $1.5 billion worldwide and continues to hold a stunning 99% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. F1 isn’t far off that high benchmark; it currently holds a 97% audience score on the aggregator website, where its critics’ score is sitting at a solid 83%. The website’s 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.”
In his review, Collider’s Ross Bonaime wrote that F1 is “quite possibly one of the most impressive and exciting racing films ever made.” According to CinemaScore, which tabulates how likely an audience member is to recommend a given movie to others, F1 earned an A grade from opening day crowds. This is on par with Pitt’s Moneyball, the rather unconventional sports drama directed by Bennett Miller and co-written by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin. It scored higher than past Pitt hits such as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Seven Years in Tibet, World War Z, and Mr. & Mrs. Smith. The lowest-rated movie of Pitt’s career as a leading man is The Mexican, which earned a C grade.
‘F1’ Puts Pitt’s Stardom to the Test
A higher CinemaScore typically means longer legs at the box office, which is necessary for a movie to survive the highly competitive summer season. Set in the world of Formula One racing, F1 reportedly cost a whopping $250 million to produce, which means that it would need to generate around half-a-billion dollars worldwide in order to break even. It’s looking at a global box office debut of over $100 million, which should be a good start. Also starring Damson Idris and Javier Bardem, F1 is playing in theaters. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
