Apple Achieves Breakthrough with F1 Blockbuster Film

After a few highly publicized missteps, it looks as if Apple finally has a bona fide blockbuster to its credit. A new report from Variety relays that Apple’s F1 movie is now its highest-grossing film to date. Since its release late last month, the Brad Pitt film has generated over $293 million in box office revenue. In other words, it only took F1 about 9 days to surpass the fully recorded revenue of other Apple theatrical films, including Killers of the Flower Moon and Napoleon. Indeed, Napoleon was so bad I genuinely forgot about its existence until seeing that its $221 million gross at the box office was bested in just a fraction of the time.

At the current rate, F1 will eclipse $300 million in revenue in no time. And to put that figure into context, it’s helpful to compare F1 to last year’s two summer blockbusters – Barbie and Oppenheimer.  In its first 10-day release window, Barbie earned about $351 million. Oppenheimer, meanwhile, generated about $175 million in its first 10 days out. All told, F1 isn’t too far off from Barbie and easily bests Oppenheimer, which is all the more impressive given Apple’s inexperience in the movie industry.

Apple profits will still be slim

Making F1 was an expensive endeavor, to say the least. Early on, analysts estimated that the cost of production soared into the $300 million range. That estimate has since been adjusted down to $250 million once various credits were taken into account.

To this point, F1 producer Jerry Bruckheimer issued the following statement to Deadline last year:

It’s completely, unfortunately, tens of millions of dollars out of whack in the wrong direction, and in the right direction for us. What people don’t realize is, first of all, we’re shooting in rebate [locations], England has a big rebate, lots of Europe has rebates and so does Abu Dhabi. It all lowers the budget. Plus, we’ve raised more money for our car [through sponsorship] than some Formula 1 teams. You take that all into consideration and it really drops that number quite a bit lower than what people would think.

Bruckheimer went on to say that he wasn’t at liberty to divulge the actual cost of production given Apple’s penchant for secrecy. Even when one takes into account the aforementioned rebates, the film still has an estimated budget of about $250 million. And notably, that figure doesn’t even take into account marketing costs which reportedly fall in the $120 million range.

It’s not about the money for Apple… yet

Apple executives, however, are undoubtedly beyond happy. Apple would ideally prefer a profit, but it’s not as if the company is hurting for cash. On the contrary, Apple with F1 would presumably be more than happy to break even and prove that, as a studio, it’s a formidable force in the industry. Recall that Apple has invested an ungodly amount of money into developing shows for its Apple TV+ platform. And even when some shows don’t yield an impressive return, Apple CEO Tim Cook has said in so many ways that it’s not solely about the financials for Apple:

“We don’t make purely financial decisions about the content,” Cook said during an earnings conference call back in 2022. “We try to find great content that has a reason for being, and we love shows like Ted Lasso and several of the other shows as well that have a reason for existing and may have a good message and may make people feel better at the end of it.”