Charles Martin
After some controversial advertising, Apple's 'F1' will be the company's best-ever theatrical debut, after a $10M preview and an immersive trailer for the Apple Vision Pro.
The company's strong push to promote the new Brad Pitt movie F1 — including a controversial ad within the Wallet app — position the Apple Original Films theatrical release to have the company's best-ever opening weekend.
Apple's new film, which stars Brad Pitt as a race-car driver returning to the Formula One circuit after 30 years away, during its first US preview, according to industry tracker Deadline. It is projected to bring in more than $55 million in its first full weekend, playing at 3,661 theatres.
This would make it Apple's best theatrical opening ever, more than doubling the opening of Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon in 2023 with its $23.2M debut weekend. The trailer for the film also took advantage of iPhone haptics when viewed on the device, making the iPhone shake as race cars zoomed by in the trailer.
Two other big budget movies movies have debuted this week to provide F1 with some box-office competition. The first is Sony's post-apocalyptic horror sequel 28 Years Later, which is expected to do around $40M for its opening weekend, along with Disney's Elio, which is expected to bring in $31.4 million for the week.
F1, directed by Joseph Kosinski and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, is said to be pulling strong interest from the 13-24 age demographic. This is considered unusual for a racing movie, which tends to skew to older viewers.
The film's projected opening matches its strong social media interest, with its trailer attracting some 845M viewers across TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, X and Instagram. This is 62 percent higher than typical action-adventure opening weekend interest figures, according to Deadline.
Overall, F1 is projected to make $115M globally across all of its opening weekends in various countries. Apple is expected to get more involved in both the marketing and distribution of its original films going forward.
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Mike Wuerthele and Malcolm Owen
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4 Comments
I had to laugh at the "controversy" about the Wallet Ad. Gruber said your real wallet is sacrosanct and he never sees advertising in his wallet. He obviously never looked. I examined one credit card in my wallet, it displays four corporate logos advertising their companies. Some cards are one big advertisement. Even the minimalist titanium Apple Card has three logos on it. I have a receipt in my wallet, oh no it has advertising printed on the back! [facepalm]
Not only that, but this is far from the first advertisement in the Wallet app. I'm frequently getting ads in my Wallet app to try and get me to shop at stores (Nike for example) to earn additional Daily Cash rewards for a limited time if I use my Apple Card. I also have to laugh at Gruber and his podcasting partner on Dithering as they both claimed they were so incensed about the ad...but the ad was apparently so unobtrusive that Ben didn't even realize he was sent the ad days prior until he actively went looking for it during the podcast recording. Like most things on the internet in modern times, this was all just ridiculous performative outrage for clicks.
The movie looks good. I’ll see it on the big screen.